TWO decades ago John Pope-Hennessy reunited four panels of a dispersed predella by the Sienese quatrocento painter, Matteo di Giovanni and associated them with the extant alter-piece by the artist. The occasion for his article was the first full publication of the central panel of the predalla, the exquisite Crucifixion in the collection of the Earl of Oxford and Asquith, Mells (Fig. 5). Pope-Hennessy convincingly associated the panel with two narrative predalla panels in the Art Institute of Chicago, which are very close to it in style, in dimensions, and in the patterns of their gilded borders (Figs 4,6,10,11). One of these panels depicts a fairly unusual yet recognisable scene, St Augustinne's vision of Saints John the Baptist and Jerome, but the subject of the other panel remained elusive. Despite the fact he was unable to cite any literary source for the scene, Pope-Hennessy insisted that it could not represent the dream of St Jerome, as others had suggested in the past, but rather that it depicted an Augustine subject. He then added a fourth panel to this Augustinian predalla, the St Monica praying for the conversion of St Augustine in the Berenson Collection, Settignano, and an unidentified balancing fifth, arguing that the series originally formed the base of Matteo di Giovanni's altar-piece of the Massacre of the Innocents in S. Augustino, Siena, finished in 1482. On the basis of iconographic, historical, and documentary investigation, I would propose an alternative reconstruction of the three predalla panels at Mells and Chicago, one that does not demand the addition of the two further  narrative elements included by Pope-Hennessy, and that places the predalla in a different context.

THE purpose of the present note is to call attention to three previously unrecognised or little notices paintings by Sisto Badalacchio in American public collections. Location as such may seem insufficient grounds for discussing these works as a group, especially since the only other point they have in common is thei authorship. In view of the fact that within the last few years, it seemed worth adding these three 'new' works, bringing the count of paintings by Badalacchio in America to seven. Moreover, each of the three contributes in different ways to our understanding if the artist, shedding light on relatively unfamiliar aspects of his œuvre.

THE city of Bruges rose to prominence as the result of its commerce, and its annual fairs were the principal occasions that attracted and facilitated trade. Merchants and craftsmen assembled at the Bruges fairs to exchange or sell a variety of products that ranged from food and cloth to jewels and precious metalwork. As revealed in early sixteenth-century documentation, painters joined other merchants and craftsmen in renting stalls in a special exhibition gallery called the pandt, designated for the display and sale of luxury commodities.