'MY GOD, how like it is to a young Mohark warrior!' Benjamin West's famous exclamation on first seeing the Apollo Belvedere is almost too good to be true. It comes pat on Wincklemann's remark apropos 'the great and manly contour' of ancient Greek statues - look at the swift Indian who pursues the deer on foot: how fleeting are his humours, how pliant and quick his nerves and muscles, how buoyant the whole frame of his body.' The story of the nearly blind Cardinal Alessandro Albani asking whether West was black or white and then feeling his face - perhaps to discover if he was beardless like an Indian - might seem to be no more than ben trovato, but Anton Raphael Mengs is said to have been 'as much struck as every other person, with the extraordinary circumstance of an American coming to study the fine arts.'

WATTEAU'S Les charmes de la vie (Wallace Collection A157, Fig.7) shows the theorbo player preparing to accompany a charming guitarist. Mirimonde has told us that he will not succeed in his suit and that the relaxed standing figure on the left, who has already played his continuo accompaniment and now rests his hand nonchalantly on the guitarist's chair, has nothing to fear from his rival. It is a haunting picture with its rich and delicately touched costumes, the melancholy central figure and elegant, inconsequential subject.