'MONSU Mignardi Pitor Francesede gran stima copia l'Ovado de Paulo'. Writing in 1660 in celebration of the master works of the art of his city - in this case Veronese's painted ceiling The triumph of Venice for the Sala del Maggior Consiglio - Marco Boschini did not hesitate to cite a French painter, together with Saraceni, Bernardo Strozzi and Guido Reni1 and such was the Frenchman's reputation that a copy by his hand was deemed to enhance the renown of even the most famous works: 'Fina in la Franza sto divin splendour...'

DESPITE the important studies of Marie Nicole Boisclair, Marco Chiarini, Luigi Salerno and others, there are still relatively few securely dated or documented paintings or frescoes by Gaspard Dughet and the chronology of his work remains unsettled. In this study new evidence from the Colonna archives will be presented and will provide a firm date for Dughet's room of frescoes in the Palazzo Colonna in Rome. The room is part of the family's living quarters and permission to see them is rarely granted. For this reason most of the frescoes are reproduced here, many for the first time.

IN the 'Schedule or Inventory / of the Pictures, Portraits & Drawings, etc / of the Right Honourable Richard late Viscount Fitzwilliam / taken by Mr William Seguier / March 1816, there were listed under 'Bolognese School' four pictures on canvas attributed to 'Annibal Caracci': St Roch and the Angel; Madonna and Angel; The Triumph of Galatea; and Adoration of the Trinity by St Philip Neri.

THE genesis of the following remarks is a conversation of several years ago with Olivier Michel at the Ecole Francaise de Rome, during the course of which he observed to me that the measurements (255 by 196 cm) of a painting of Christand the Canaanite Woman in the Palazzo del Municipio in Parma closely agreed with the interior measurements (257.5 by 202 cm) of the architectural frame still existing in the room that was once the chapel of Palazzo Farnese in Rome. The impresa of Cardinal Odoardo Farnese appears twice beneath this frame (not visible in the illustration), indicating that it was built concurrently with the painting of the picture it was to hold. This picture, which was probably Annibale Carracci's first commission in the service of Cardinal Farnese, was, in Malvasia's words, the 'Cananeafamosa'. Bellori also remarked upon its reputation, describing the picture at some length, even while lamenting its poor state of preservation:'Per la Cappella del medesimo…'

'HIS Majesty ordered Velizquez to be awarded payment of three hundred ducats and a pension of a further three hundred that required the authorisation of His Holiness Urban VIII, which was granted in the year 1626'. We owe to Francisco Pacheco this account of how Velazquez was rewarded for his equestrian portrait of Philip IV (since lost). Pacheco also recalls that when the painting was exhibited, with the royal consent, in the Calle Mayor in Madrid it 'won the admiration of all the Court and the envy of artists' and inspired 'very elegant verses.'

IN 1925 the Warsaw Museum of Fine Arts acquired from the Tyszkiewicz collection two handsome large pendants representing respectively Mars and Venus and Bacchus and Ariadne. They each measure 171 by 130 cm. Both are on canvas and in excellent condition. To this day they are thought to be by Francois Lemoyne. Actually they are by Giambattista Pittoni, whose touch came uncannily close to Lemoyne's at times. Pittoni's 'French manner' has always puzzled students of his art, who, however, are invariably reluctant to consider that he could possibly owe something to the French school or have ventured on French soil.'