THERE are numerous versions of Raphael's Madonna dei garofani (the Madonna of the pinks). Many of them are obviously copies and in this century none has been generally acknowledged as an original work by Raphael. Yet most scholars agree that such an original must have existed. Moreover the very abundance of the copies (see Appendix) testifies to the composition's fame. The version which was probably most esteemed in the first half of the last century is that in the collection of the Duke of Northumberland (Fig.3). In August last year the Duke generously agreed to its being taken to the National Gallery, London for close examination. The subtlety and assurance of the modelling and the delicacy and solidity of the handling, qualities dif- ficult to discern when the painting hung in the corridor at Alnwick Castle, became more apparent in the conservation studio, and the evidence revealed by both X-radiography and, above all, infra-red reflectography, which will be presented in this article, dispelled any residual doubts that the original painting had been rediscovered. It was clear too, and clearer still after the picture was cleaned by Herbert Lank in October and November 1991, that it had survived in exceptionally good condition.

IN HIS 1628 biography of Cigoli, Giovanni Battista Cardi mentions – among the many works his uncle executed as private commissions – a Jael and Sisera and a St Jerome, both painted for Ascanio Pucci. Of the St Jerome every trace has been lost, but in 1913 Battelli suggested that the Sisera might be identified with a small painting on copper in the Corsini Collection (Fig.28), traditionally attributed to Matteo Rosselli. In this composition, the biblical heroine Jael is depicted about to drive a spike into the head of the military chieftain Sisera, an enemy of her people whom she had taken into her house following the defeat of his army by the Jews (Judges: 4).

THE IDEA that Jacopo da Pontormo, Agnolo Bronzino, and Alessandro Allori comprised a 'lineage' was first put forth by Vasari, and this has long been cited as a classic example of an artistic 'family', whose generations were constructed by the artistic influence of master on pupil. Despite Pontormo's well-known irascibility, and secretive attitude about his work, Vasari wrote that Bronzino was so patient and loving that Pontormo was forced to care about him, and love him as a son. Thus Vasari described their relationship in familial terms, as if the older artist had been the younger's father, although no family tie existed. Pontormo's fondness for Bronzino was manifested in several ways: he inserted a portrait of his apprentice in one of the panels for Pierfrancesco Borgherini's bedroom, and he consistently involved Bronzino as his assistant in a variety of projects.

THAT Parmigianino was an avid student of the art of his contemporaries - and of antiquity, for that matter - is amply demon- strated, not only by general resemblances, but also by specific correspondences. Indeed, it has been established that a number of Parmigianino drawings are more or less straightforward copies of whole compositions or particular details from the works of his peers. Predictably enough, the artists he copied most were Correggio, Raphael, and Michelangelo, but he did not neglect Giulio Romano, Polidoro da Caravaggio, Perino del Vaga, Rosso Fiorentino, or even Dürer. Less expected, perhaps, is the discovery that he also copied from the work of Andrea Mantegna.

LODOVICO CARDI, 'il Cigoli', (1554-1613) is the most es- teemed painter of the Florentine baroque and his dramatic Caravaggesque Ecce Homo (Fig.55) is his most celebrated work. Its very début appears to have been a triumph; in a contest in Rome around 1607 it reputedly prevailed over two others of the same subject, by Domenico Passignano and by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. For most of its nearly four-hundred years of existence, the Ecce Homo has enjoyed a place of honour in the Palazzo Pitti, hanging in the bedroom of two successive Grand Dukes of Tuscany, Ferdinando II (1610-70) and Cosimo III (1641-1723), and then in the palace gallery. It was frequently imitated, by such distinguished artists as Bartolomeo Manfredi, Bernardo Strozzi, Domenico Fetti and Orazio de' Ferrari. By the eighteenth century, it had come to figure prominently in the chief guide-books, and such celebrity won it a place among the Florentine treasures expropriated for the Musée Napoléon in Paris, where it remained from 1799 to 1815.

WHEN, in 1886, John Ruskin, in his fragmentary autobiography Praeterita, came to describe the summer of 1842 which he felt to be of such decisive importance in his devel- opment, he could find no diary for that year. Assuming that he had not kept one, he wrote: 'To my sorrow, and extreme surprise, I find no diary whatsoever of the feelings or discoveries of this year. They were too many, and too bewildering to be written'. He was mistaken: not only had a diary been written, but it still exists though by the time Ruskin was engaged on Praeterita it was no longer in his possession. He had forgotten that on Christmas Eve 1872 he had sent it to his close friend Charles Eliot Norton, then living in London with his family during an extended stay in Europe. It remained in the Norton family until 1936, when it joined the large collection of Ruskin manuscripts in the Yale University Library, and, although its importance was noted in an illuminating article by Van Akin Burd of 1953, its significance for charting the growth of Ruskin's interest in early Italian art has not hitherto been explored.