This article sets out to re-examine the furniture and picture frames traditionally attributed to the Pelletier workshop in London, to make some new attributions and to attempt to define the roles played by the different members of the family. Jean Pelletier and his two sons, Rene and Thomas, who practised as carvers, gilders and engravers, came from Paris and settled in London during the 1680s. They were Huguenots,' and may have left France to avoid the persecution that culminated in the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in October 1685. They did not come directly to London, for in December 1681 Jean Pelletier is recorded as present in Amsterdam where he became a member of the Huguenot church.2 In the same -year, his eldest son, Rene, ten years Thomas's senior, took up citizenship of Amsterdam, describing his profession as engraver.

Since the publication of Michael Rysbrack's letters to his patron Sir Edward Littleton, it has been well known that he executed 'a Chimney Piece for the Earl of Hopetoun, near ten feet long, and six feet and near ten inches high, with Women, Thermes, cloathed with drapery; almost Round" - the chimneypiece in the Red Drawing Room at Hopetoun House near Edinburgh (Fig.21). It is the source of the design that has remained a matter of speculation,2 fuelled by the existence of a drawing (Fig.24), with a letter from Robert Adam, among the Hopetoun papers. This article assesses the arguments concerning the authorship of a design which was an important early catalyst in the evolution of Neo-classicism in England.

In comparison with that of his more celebrated brother, marchese Vincenzo, the art collecting of Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani and the choices that informed it have been neglected in the art-historical literature. The aims of the present study are to establish which of the works of art in the vast collection that came together after Benedetto's death had in fact belonged to him, to distinguish between the two brothers' preferences, and in so doing to make an attempt at gaug- ing differences between religious patronage and secular taste in this period. As will become apparent, Vincenzo was perhaps closer to us in sensibility, while his brother embodied an all-encompassing religious viewpoint which is very far from modern concerns. Nonetheless, the two men co-existed symbiotically and, with hindsight, we can see them as representing two sides of a particular moment in Seicento culture, one made exceptional by the presence of Caravaggio.