'Ma per non tediare i lectori lascero indrieto moltissime opere per me producte. So che in detta materia non si pub pigliare diletto.' (Lorenzo Ghiberti: I Commentari)

THE CHRONOLOGY and authorship of two elements of the Florentine oratory of Orsanmichele - the stained glass windows and the western portals - have continued to vex modern students of the building. Together with the in- terior fresco campaign, they concluded the efforts of the Compagnia di Orsanmichele to decorate the oratory it had slowly transformed from an open loggia below the communal granary during the second half of the Trecento. Hitherto unknown documents provide a substantial amount of new information about both endeavours, and underline Orsanmichele's position as an important religious and civic monument during this period, second only to the Florentine Cathedral and Baptistery.

THE REASON for the dedication of this article will be apparent to any reader. Without Giovanni Poggi's researches, it would never have come to be written. His inexhaustible curiosity and desire to deepen our knowledge of the past can be appreciated in the rapid succession of articles that he wrote in the early numbers of Rivista d'Arte and can now be more widely admired in the recent, much amplified, new edition of his II Duomo di Firenze. The material that he collected for the edition of Michelangelo's letters which he himself never achieved is a further testimony to his unflagging search for more information. Poggi's aim was to write a commentary for each letter where the documentary material warranted it. And in pursuit of this, he set out to re-examine all the evidence which had already been published, checking and frequently retranscribing every document relating to Michelangelo's life and work known to be located in Florentine archives. But he also sought out new sources of information. It was he who realised the potential of the bank books of the Rome-based Balducci, today conserved in the Florence Archivio di Stato. His notes show that he knew, and had, indeed, transcribed, documents relating to Michelangelo's first stay in Rome which were first published only in 1981. They show also that he was familiar with some of the documents relating to the construction of the S. Lorenzo New Sacristy published for the first time in 1979. His finds in the Salviati Archive concerning the tomb of Julius II, without doubt made at a time when access was exception- ally difficult, are yet another witness to an indefatigable pursuit of knowledge which makes the reading of his notes a moving experience.

A SMALL Trecento panel showing St Jerome extracting a thorn from a lion's paw has recently come to light in a private collection in London (Fig. 16).* Its size and format are those of a predella panel, and it can be shown to have once formed part of Cecco di Pietro's altar-piece, painted for the Benedictine monastery at Agnano and now in the collection of the Cassa di Risparmio di Pisa.

THE study of the position of dowel-holes can be extremely instructive in reconstructing the original appearance of fourteenth- century Sienese polyptychs. Recent examination of the three panels attributed to Simone Martini and his workshop in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, has now made it possible securely to establish their relationship to the other panels from the same altar-piece.

DOMENICO BECCAFUMI's early activity as a miniaturist has be- come evident only recently, thanks to the rediscovery by Daniela Gallavotti Cavallero in 1980 of a small Antiphonary in the sacristy of SS. Annunziata at the hospital of S. Maria della Scala in Siena.' The sources are silent about this aspect of the Sienese painter's activities, and certainly the four tiny initial letters in the SS. Annunziata manuscript could easily have escaped the attention of Vasari and later writers, intent as they were on listing Beccafumi's major altar-piece and fresco commis- sions in the churches and palaces of Siena

FRANCESCO MENZOCCHI is mentioned by Vasari in his life of Girolamo Genga as the latter's pupil. Born in Forli in 1502, he was probably taught the rudiments of painting by his father, Sebastiano, who is mentioned by Marchesi in 1726 as a painter and writer,' but of whose work nothing has been identified. Vasari suggests he was self-taught: 'Comincib, essendo Fanciulletto, a disegnar da se, imitando e ritraendo in Forli nel duomo una tavola di Marco parmigiano da Forli, tenuta allora delle pitture moderne la migliore' certainly his work is eclectic and in addition to Palmezzano, Vasari mentions that he copied work by the Riminese artist Rondinelli. Genga was in Forli working in the Lombardini chapel of St Francis in 1518 and it was probably then that Menzocchi met him. He appears to have been working with Genga at the Villa Imperiale, Pesaro, for Francesco Maria I delle Rovere and Eleanora Gonzaga between 1523 and 1526 when work there was interrupted. Menzocchi then went to Venice where he painted for the Patriarch Grimani, and came under the influence of Pordenone and Francesco Salviati. Summoned back to the Villa Imperiale by Eleanora Gonzaga in 1530, he worked there alongside the brothers Dossi and the young Bronzino. In 1536 Menzocchi was back in Forli. In 1543 he was in Urbino, and in 1545 and 1551 he had important commissions in Loreto. He died in Forli in 1574.

IN 1948, Rudolph Wittkower published a short note in this Magazine discussing Inigo Jones's virtuosity and personality as a connoisseur and architect as revealed in the letters of the papal agent to the court of Charles I, Gregorio Panzani.' When an eagerly awaited gift of several pictures arrived, Jones 'in order to be able to study them better threw off his coat, put on his eye-glasses, took a candle and, together with the King, began to examine them very closely'. The architect's behaviour clearly irritated Panzani, who wrote in a second letter that, 'The King's architect Jones believes that the picture by Leonardo is the portrait of a certain Venetian, Ginevra Benci, and he concludes it from the G. and B. inscribed on her breast. As he is very conceited and boastful he often repeats this idea of his to demonstrate his great knowledge of painting. As the King had removed the names of the painters, which I had fixed to each picture, he also boasts of having attributed almost all the pictures correctly.'