THE Prado has never looked so good. Sensitive conservation of individual paintings continues with exemplary caution and to stunning effect. Refurbishment of the galleries pro- ceeds slowly, hampered by lack of funds, lack of space and the demands of an ambitious exhibitions programme which this month brings a superb monographic show of paintings and drawings by Caspar David Friedrich to Madrid. The sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian pictures have been removed from the corridor-like grande galerie that runs the length of the building and are simply but effectively disposed on off-white walls in suites of their own. They have been replaced by eighteenth-century works - Tiepolo, Giaquinto and Solimena can be studied at their very best - with at the end Mengs's royal portraits, unseen for many years, providing a prelude to the room containing Goya's great Family of Charles IV. These may serve as a reminder of the very great riches the Prado has in store (nothing by Melendez is currently on view, and there is still no func- tional printroom), and it is against this backdrop that recent events among the Madrid museums must be judged.

IN 1987 the Cleveland Museum of Art acquired a portrait by Maerten van Heemskerck (Fig.1), which had come to light at a Paris auction in March that year. Previously unrecorded, it was listed in the sale catalogue as 'attributed to Heemskerck', but stylistic differences from the master's other portraits, apparently led some scholars to reserve judgement or even reject it. From Rainer Grosshans's positive reaction to the painting in a letter of 22nd Sep- tember 1987 - based only on the colour reproduction in the catalogue - it seems certain that, had he seen it, he would have included it among Heemskerck's authentic works in his monograph of 1980. Since its acquisition by the Museum, technical examination (see Appendix) and stylistic studies have confirmed that this is not only a work by the master, but one of his masterpieces.

IN Part I of this article I analysed Vincent van Gogh's portraits of Augustine Roulin.* Here I shall discuss the six portraits of her husband, the postman Joseph Roulin, and the seven of their mutual friend Marie Ginoux.

PROVIDING a thoroughly Surrealist account of his identity in an article entitled 'History of a Natural History' in 1937, Max Ernst slips at one point from DonJuanism into something altogether more revealing. Having bragged about the fascination he apparently exercised over women, he writes:

A PAINTING of a nymph and satyr with leopards in the foreground (Fig.32) was acquired with an attribution to Rubens by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1975, at which time it was be- lieved - on the basis of a study byJulius Held - to be identical with one described by Rubens in a letter to Sir Dudley Carleton of 1618 as 'Leopards done from nature, with satyrs and nymphs, original by my hand except a beautiful landscape done by the hand of a capable specialist in this field'. Over the years the attribution has been questioned, and in 1987 the museum asked the Canadian Conservation Institute to undertake a scientific examination in the hope of clarifying the painting's date.

ONE of the finest examples of seventeenth-century French painting in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, is a canvas of Christ and the three Maries (Fig.34) but, despite the picture's obvious quality, its author has proved somewhat difficult to pin  down. It was originally acquired in Italy in 1817 by Prince V.S. Trubetskoy for the Hermitage collection, and was transferred to  the Pushkin Museum in 1930. For a long time it was thought to be by Annibale Carracci. The Russian art historian V.N. Lazarev was the first to query the assumption that it was by an Italian artist, and these doubts were confirmed by Federico Zeri during a visit to the museum in 1960.

(Fig.34) but, despite the picture's obvious quality, its author has proved somewhat difficult to pin  down. It was originally acquired in Italy in 1817 by Prince V.S. Trubetskoy for the Hermitage collection, and was transferred to  the Pushkin Museum in 1930. For a long time it was thought to be by Annibale Carracci. The Russian art historian V.N. Lazarev was the first to query the assumption that it was by an Italian artist, and these doubts were confirmed by Federico Zeri during a visit to the museum in 1960.