It is well known that the paintings of the Master of Flemalle, Robert Campin, were used as sources by manuscript illuminators.' The best known examples are in the Salisbury Breviary, illuminated in Paris between 1424 and c.1460 by the Bedford workshop,2 and in the Hours of Catherine of Cleves, illuminated most probably in Utrecht around 1440 by the Master of Catherine of Cleves.3 In these cases the borrowings are not repetitions of entire compositions, but show figures or groups of figures carefully integrated into miniatures which remain characteristic of the illuminators' indigenous style. The manner in which they are used suggests that they were regarded as useful and eye-catching motifs, derived from pattern-book drawings, rather than through first hand knowledge of Campin's paintings.

Almost five hundred years ago, on the evening of 22nd May 1498, a wooden scaffold was erected on the Piazza della Signoria in Florence for the public execution and burning of Savonarola and two of his followers (Fig.28). Among those who participated in this horrific spectacle was the Dominican Benedetto Pagagnotti, a man who had a special relationship to the condemned friar, as they had lived together in the same Florentine monastery. But the path on which Pagagnotti had set out, a path which led to promotion within the Church, to humanist scholarship and a life of refinement, had brought him into conflict with his fellow friar. Savonarola is remembered to this day by a plaque at the spot where he died, while Pagagnotti has been forgotten. And yet his mark is to be found in a distant, unexpected place, in the rooms of the National Gallery in London.