THE CAVALCANTI tabernacle of The Annunciation in S. Croce, Florence, has long been considered one of Donatello’s most innovative works (Fig.1). Its recent restoration in 1994 and that of the terracotta putti on its pediment in 1995 have provided a wealth of new technical information about the monument. Nevertheless, certain problems are still unresolved. The patrons who commissioned the tabernacle have remained elusive, as have the date of its execution, its original purpose and setting, and the vexed question of possible workshop participation. With the help of new documentary material and the assistance of several colleagues, this article identifies the particular Cavalcanti family responsible for the Annunciation tabernacle, demonstrates that it served as the altarpiece for a chapel and examines the chapel’s pre-history, later development and successive patrons.

TWO WORKS BY Jean Dassier (1676–1763) and his sons Jacques-Antoine (1715–59) and Antoine (1718–80), medallists of the Republic of Geneva, occupy an important place within the iconography of Lucius Junius Brutus, founder of the Roman Republic, whose devotion to liberty was put to the ultimate test when he condemned his two sons to death for treason. The subject was to assume a pivotal role within the visual imagery of Revolutionary France in the wake of Jacques-Louis David’s celebrated painting Lictors returning to Brutus the bodies of his sons (Fig.15), depicting the consul brooding in the shadows, engulfed in the pathos of his fateful choice. Four decades earlier, the Dassiers explored the theme from a republican perspective within a predominately monarchist Continent. Their works form part of L’Histoire de la République romaine, a suite of sixty small medals, or jetons, in both silver and bronze, created between 1740 and 1748 and presented publicly in the Mercure de France in September 1750. The first (number five in the series) is engraved with a representation of Brutus’ oath before the dying Lucretia on the obverse, and an allegory of the liberation of Rome under his leadership on the reverse (Figs.16a and 16b). The second (number six in the series) bears, respectively, a bust of the consul and the scene of the execution of his sons in his presence (Figs.17a and 17b). Encompassed within the tiny frames are dramatic depictions of Brutus’ devotion to his cause, his triumph and his destiny.

IN THE AFTERMATH of the House of Commons agreeing in April 1824 to pay John Julius Angerstein £57,000 for his picture collection, hopeful collectors wondered how they too might persuade Parliament to acquire their prized possessions. Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein and widow of the poet, was no exception. On 15th December 1843 she wrote to her friend the painter Joseph Severn, asking for ‘counsel and information’ about how she might go about interesting the National Gallery in Titian’s Woman taken in adultery (see Appendix below). Recently several biographers have proposed that Mary Shelley’s Titian was either the painting now in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow (Fig.21) or a forgery. However, Shelley’s letter itself provides information that unequivocally identifies it as one of a handful of versions of the Woman taken in adultery produced by Bonifacio de’ Pitati and his studio. Furthermore, although the painting in question may not have been by Titian, the letter and Mary Shelley’s subsequent efforts to bring the painting to London shed light not only on her aesthetic sensibilities but on the early acquisition policy of the National Gallery and the fate of paintings considered to be ‘less than sufficient’ for admittance into the collection.

IN THE YEARS 1636 to 1656 the interior of the Carmelite church of S. Martino ai Monti in Rome was embellished with frescos and stuccowork. Important artists, including Giovan Francesco Grimaldi, Gaspard Dughet (Fig.31) and Pietro Testa, were hired to paint the frescos. It has been assumed on good grounds that the decoration was commissioned by the prior, Giovan Antonio Filippini (1598–1657; Fig.30), who paid for the entire interior decoration. What little is known of his background suggests that he came from a Roman family, was of limited means and was slow to make decisions. Consequently it has been argued that the interior decoration of S. Martino shows little iconographic coherence because, as a result of lack of funds, work progressed at a slow pace.

AN ETCHING IN the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, depicts a bearded man with swirling draperies whose pursuit of a nude woman is halted by her transformation into a tree (Fig.37). Although the subject of this print and the drawing on which it is based has always been identified as that of Apollo and Daphne, it is in fact a provocative mythological subject as rare as the print itself, which is only recorded in four impressions.

WHEN IN 1559 the Antwerp publisher Hieronymus Cock issued the series of prints known as the Small Landscapes, he was taking a considerable risk as neither he nor anyone else had published prints of local landscape views before. The compositions were simple, depicting the modest villages, farms and pastures of Brabant in a direct, intimate fashion (Figs.41, 43, 45 and 47). The first set of eighteen prints was evidently a commercial success, since Cock went on to publish a further set of twenty-six views in 1561. A generation later, in 1601, Philips Galle reissued the two sets together as a single series, a testament to their lasting artistic currency. In 1612 the prints migrated north when in Amsterdam Claes Jansz Visscher etched and published twenty-four copies after the originals. The impact of the Small Landscapes via Visscher’s copies has been seen as seminal in the development of vernacular landscape imagery in the Netherlands, but their impact on artists working in Antwerp in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries has not been considered. Indeed, for all their novelty, it has been suggested that they represented an artistic dead-end until they were introduced to artists working in the newly forged United Provinces. New research disproves this assumption: unlike their more diffuse and indirect influence in the north, we can trace a specific genealogy of the prints to one of the most prolific painting workshops in Antwerp at the turn of the seventeenth century, that of Abel Grimmer (c.1570– c.1618–19). The previously unnoticed evidence of their function as direct models for landscape paintings in Antwerp not only underscores the iconographic significance of prints, but also illuminates the central contribution of prints to workshop practices in the painting studios of Antwerp at this date.

ON 12TH SEPTEMBER 2007 Konrad Oberhuber died aged seventy-two after a long illness. He was one of the outstanding art historians of his time, and his eye and connoisseurship in the field of Renaissance and Baroque art were unrivalled. He was born on 31st March 1935 in Linz, Austria, into a family that adhered to the ideas of Rudolf Steiner. Anthroposophic thought and its Goethian and religious background remained essential for him throughout his life and were fundamental for his anthropological approach to art and artists. He studied art history with Karl Swoboda in Vienna and his formation was moulded by the famous Vienna school founded by Riegl, Wickhoff, Dvorák and Schlosser which insisted on a thorough training in all historical methodologies.