A STRIKING PORTRAIT study in oil on paper belonging to the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin was for understandable reasons formerly classified among that collection's nineteenth-century drawings. Its true author, however, can be firmly established from an inscription clearly spelled out on the back, written in what appears to be a sixteenth-century hand: 'Ritratto di naturale di master Lorenzo Lotto / venetian': 'a portrait from life by master Lorenzo Lotto of Venice'. Notwithstanding this convincing identification, the portrait is kept among the 'zweiter Garnitur' drawings in the Kupferstichkabinett and has never previously been published.

ELLIS WATERHOUSE, one of the most distinguished twentieth-century British art historians, was born a century ago, on 16th February 1905, and died on 7th September 1985. It seems a suitable moment to reconsider his character and his achievements – all the more so since, with the passage of time and developments in art history, both may gradually become lost to view. For such an essay THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE is certainly the appropriate place. He was devoted to it as a regular contributor, on its board of advisers and directors and even, briefly, its unofficial editor.

OVER THE PAST few decades there has been some debate about the differences and relative merits of the two most important versions of Anthony van Dyck's portrait of Rachel de Ruvigny, Countess of Southampton. One is in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, the other in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. The hand of Van Dyck is acknowledged in both, but scholars have been divided about which is the primary version. The exhibition commemorating the four-hundredth anniversary of Van Dyck's birth enabled the Melbourne painting to return to England for the first time in over seventy-five years.

THE EXHIBITION Pioneering Modern Painting: Cézanne & Pissarro 1865-1885 opened to large crowds this June at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, for all intents and purposes the quintessential 'summer show'. Here are glorious landscapes, most of which were painted in the summer months, by two of France's greatest landscape painters. But why, one might ask, was Impressionism at the Modern, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art was exhibiting Matisse?

ACCORDING TO  George Vertue, the Venetian painter Jacopo Amigoni (1682-1752), during his ten-year stay in London from c.1729 to 1739 had 'his dwelling, middle of great Marlbro'street'. But recent archival research, published here for the first time, reveals that in the years 1732-34 Amigoni lived in Silver Street (now Beak Street), near Golden Square, only moving to Great Marlborough Street in 1734, where he stayed until 1739. It is not known where the painter lived following his arrival in London towards the end of 1729, whether he lodged with a friend or stayed in rented accommodation.

IN 1563, Queen Elizabeth I granted a number of crown estates to her favourite, Lord Robert Dudley (1532/33-88), whom she created Earl of Leicester the following year. Among these was Kenilworth Castle, Warwickshire. Shortly after taking possession, the new earl embarked upon an ambitious programme of building and rebuilding designed to transform the castle from a defensive structure into a glittering stage on which he might entertain the queen during her annual summer progresses. These extensive building works, which reputedly cost £60,000, were not completed until 1575, the year of the famous Kenilworth festivities.