THE only medieval figure sculpture still in situ today on the Great Screen of Winchester Cathedral (Fig. 1) consists of two pairs of spandrel reliefs, showing the Annunciation and the Visitation, flanking the doors of its western face (Fig.2). A large number of surviving fragments can, how- ever, be assigned to the screen's original programme. These may be grouped according to size: first, the images, most now headless, originally from the thirty-four small niches; secondly, the very damaged sculptures of the Madonna and Child (Fig. 16) and the Almighty (Fig.14), on a slightly larger scale; and, finally, the life-sized heads which, apart from one gloved hand, are all that remain of the figures from the eighteen large niches. The large heads can be subdivided stylistically, the greater number being the work of a sculptor who seems to have carved all the other statuary from the screen (here called hand A). The five heads distinguished by their scowling expressions are by a different hand (here called B).

(Fig.14), on a slightly larger scale; and, finally, the life-sized heads which, apart from one gloved hand, are all that remain of the figures from the eighteen large niches. The large heads can be subdivided stylistically, the greater number being the work of a sculptor who seems to have carved all the other statuary from the screen (here called hand A). The five heads distinguished by their scowling expressions are by a different hand (here called B).

ONE of the more imposing pieces of Italian renaissance sculpture in the Victoria and Albert Museum, the large, richly decorated altar-piece of c. 1493-97 attributed to the Florentine marble sculptor Andrea di Piero Ferrucci (Fig.22), is approaching the five-hundredth anniversary of its creation.* Neither the artist responsible for it nor the date of its execution has, however, been firmly established so far, and its patron has been incorrectly identified for the past century. In observance of the occasion, I should like to present several newly discovered documents which con- firm and enhance its traditional attribution, though re- stricting the dates commonly assumed for its execution, and materially revise previous assumptions about its patronage and iconography.

IT is hardly a novelty to state that Daniele da Volterra employed plastic models in the preparation of his paintings. Michelangelo's Samson killing two Philistines, probably cast in bronze by Daniele himself, was depicted twice, from different angles, in Daniele's Massacre of the innocents, and his double-sided David and Goliath was, as Vasari says, based on a clay model, the design of which was inspired by Michelangelo. The model complete, Daniele's practice was evidently to make highly finished drawings from it, presumably to test which viewpoints would best suit the final painting(s): there are at least three after the David and Goliath model. Furthermore, Tintoretto is stated by Ridolfi to have been supplied with models of Michelangelo's Times of day by Daniele, and although Tintoretto certainly had access to plastic copies of Michelangelo's figures well before Daniele's first visit to Florence in 1557, it may be that Ridolfi's reference registers the superiority of Daniele's versions to those previously avail- able, since, as Vasari records, he took casts of the New Sacristy figures. Daniele's copies may some day be identified among the numerous surviving replicas of Michelangelo's statues. By the late 1550s, of course, Daniele's attentions were increasingly directed to sculpture, and painting had receded to second place in his work.

by Daniele, and although Tintoretto certainly had access to plastic copies of Michelangelo's figures well before Daniele's first visit to Florence in 1557, it may be that Ridolfi's reference registers the superiority of Daniele's versions to those previously avail- able, since, as Vasari records, he took casts of the New Sacristy figures. Daniele's copies may some day be identified among the numerous surviving replicas of Michelangelo's statues. By the late 1550s, of course, Daniele's attentions were increasingly directed to sculpture, and painting had receded to second place in his work.

IN 1992 the Victoria and Albert Museum acquired a hitherto unrecorded roundel in Solnhofen stone depicting a female figure of Temperance pouring water into a dish of wine, set in a landscape (Fig.44). The relief is signed and dated at the bottom: IOAN PEIS 1548. The signature can be identified with that of Hans Peisser (c. 1500/03-c. 1573) a Nuremberg sculptor, engraver and architect, one of the generation of Nuremberg artists after Veit Stoss, and a contemporary of Peter and Herman Vischer the Younger, Ludwig Krug and Peter Flotner. An extended study of the life and work of the artist has recently been published by Klaus Pechstein, building on previous articles by Edmund Wilhelm Braun, Heinz Stafski and Georg Habich. According to Pechstein, Peisser was born in Hassfurt in Franconia and became a citizen of Nuremberg in 1526 after an apprenticeship, probably in the workshop of Veit Stoss. He was trained as a woodcarver (pildschniczer) and between 1520 and 1525 executed the sculpture for the high altar-piece in the Frauenkirche in Nuremberg, which was commissioned by Jacob Welser. Until 1815, when it was partly destroyed, this was the largest altar- piece in the Italianate (welsch) manner in South Germany. On the establishment of Lutheranism in Nuremberg in 1525 there were no further commissions for religious sculpture in the city, and subsequently Peisser worked for patrons elsewhere. In 1531 he completed the high altar in the Stift Kremsmiinster in Upper Austria, now in the nearby parish church in Griinau, the last renaissance altar-piece by a Nuremberg sculptor. Here we can glimpse the dilemma posed by the change in the market after the Reformation for a sculptor trained to produce altar-pieces. From now on Peisser provided wooden models for various secular fountain projects in Nuremberg (the Rathaus putto fountain and the so-called 'Gänsemännchen' fountain) as well as for bronze fountains in Linz in Lower Austria, and in Friesach in Carinthia. At the beginning of 1559 Peisser gave up his citizenship of Nuremberg to serve the Duke of Pomerania. In 1562 he was appointed wood-carver at the court of the Archduke Ferdinand in Prague, where again he executed models, 'patronen von holzwerch', for the bronze fountain in the garden of the Belvedere in Prague, which was completed in 1571. He seems to have died soon after, for there is no further mention of him in the records. In addition to these commissions for monumental objects, Peisser, like many other artists, turned to producing small-scale models in wood for medals; examples are in the Skulpturengalerie in Berlin, and in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Although several medals in bronze and lead are attributed to him, only two of them are signed, and none is dated. He produced other secular objects, such as a towel-holder with a standing Caritas figure in limewood, recently acquired by the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum and now in the Fränkische Galerie in Kronach (Franconia).

HITHERTO unknown documents from the Cornaro family archives in Palazzo Mocenigo, Venice, bring new light to bear on Federico Cornaro's two chapels in Rome.* The first of these is the famous burial site he commissioned Gianlorenzo Bernini to design for him in S. Maria della Vittoria, for which the famous sculptor executed St Theresa in ecstasy; the second was a never finished and now almost completely forgotten chapel in S. Maria in Trastevere.

; the second was a never finished and now almost completely forgotten chapel in S. Maria in Trastevere.

BERNARDINO LUDOVISI's lavish memorial for Filippo Colonna, which today stands in the church of S. Andrea in Paliano, was described in detail by Giovanni Francesco Chracas some two and a half centuries ago, but since that time has dropped com- pletely out of the literature both on Ludovisi and on baroque sculpture in general.* It is a handsome monument (Figs.46 and 47), and Chracas's admiration for it, expressed at much greater length than was his custom for works of art in an entry in his Diario Ordinario for 24th April 1745, is well worth repeating (the annotations in square brackets are mine; for his complete text, see the Appendix below):

for 24th April 1745, is well worth repeating (the annotations in square brackets are mine; for his complete text, see the Appendix below):

THIS summer the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired an especially engaging and hitherto unknown bozzetto (Figs.48 and 49) by the great Neo-classical master, Antonio Canova (1757- 1822). It was bought on the Paris market, coming from a French collection. The finding of a Canova bozzetto outside Italy is in itself a rarity; the number of his models in other countries can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Another unusual aspect of this Venus and Cupid is that it is a study apparently not for sculpture but for painting. In fact two squarish canvases of this composition exist, with Venus truncated just below the knee, in Canova's house at Possagno, along with several other Venus subjects, which the artist began painting around 1785. The better of the two in question is dateable by his own testimony 1798-99. The only other case known to me of Canova modelling before settling down to paint is the wax Hercules shooting his sons in the Museo Correr, preparatory to the painting at Bassano.

in the Museo Correr, preparatory to the painting at Bassano.

HANNO WALTER KRUFT, who to many of his friends appeared his brilliant and elegant self in Italy this summer died unexpectedly and was buried, as he had wished, at Genazzano on 16th September. The village, where he had for many years spent his vacations, overlooks Olevano, beloved resort of the German Romantics, and symbolised his love for Italy as well as his abiding sense of participating in a cultural tradition, to which he later contributed with an edition of the Tagebücher of Ferdinand Gregorovius. Kruft was born at Duisseldorf in 1938 and began his art-historical studies at Bonn under the guidance of Herbert von Einem. There in 1964 he completed a penetrating and influential thesis on an intractable problem of late Trecento north Italian painting, the career of Altichiero. Von Einem's was to prove an enduring influence, not least in instilling a love for Goethe, on whom Kruft delivered a memorable lecture at the Bibliotheca Hertziana. Eight years later he wrote his 'Habili- tation' on Domenico Gaggini. His intellectual engagement with renaissance sculpture in South Italy was to last a lifetime: after the publication of his initial monograph Domenico Gaggini und seine Werkstatt (Munich, 1972) he followed it with Antonello Gaggini und seine Söhne (Munich, 1980). A third major monograph, his eagerly awaited treatment of Francesco Laurana is, fortunately, already at proof stage. The books on the Gaggini were typical of the scholar, thorough, incisively written and imaginative. Imagination was perhaps the characteristic which most coloured Kruft's scholarship. That and its awe-inspiring range, which could include an influential paper at the 1967 Giotto congress on the use of classical motifs in Duecento painting, an apergu on the Codex Escurialensis, and an article on Arnold Schoenberg. In 1985 appeared his magnificent and massive Geschichte der Archi- tekturtheorie, shortly to appear in an English version. It has been justly compared in its scope and ambition to Julius von Schlosser's Die Kunstliteratur of 1924.

of 1924.