In his biography of Jan van Scorel, Karel van Mander dwells with exceptional specificity on the young painter's journey to Rome by way of Germany, Austria, Venice and the Holy Land, noting Scorel's industry in studying the landscape and monuments along his route. Van Mander states that after working for the nobility of Carinthia, Scorel went on to Venice, departing from there for a brief voyage to the Holy Land when he was twenty-five years old, hence presumably after 1st August 1520.1 Attesting to the accuracy of Van Mander's account is Scorel's earliest dated work, the Holy kinship altar-piece of 1519 (Fig.3), still in the church at Obervellach, near Spittal in Carinthia, for which it was most probably commissioned.2 Another important touchstone for Scorel's early work, the Tobias and the angel signed and dated 1521 (Fig.4), was almost certainly painted in Venice or the Veneto after his return from the Holy Land. These two works bracket Scorel's earliest period and are the basis for further attributions to his years of travel. The rediscovery of the Landscape with tournament and hunters, tentatively attributed to Scorel by Friedrich Winkler more than sixty years ago, and the recent appearance of another landscape possibly identical with one described by Marcantonio Michiel in Venice in the early 1520s, provide an opportunity to re-examine Scorel's rapid early development and the degree to which it may have been conditioned by the requirements of his foreign patrons. In much the same way that the rediscovery from 1957 to 1973 of the panels of the Marchiennes polyptych of Sts Stephen and James the Great contributed to a fuller understanding of Scorel's late career, so the addition of these two closely-related landscapes makes the earliest phase of his activity clearer and more cohesive.

Information about a hitherto unrecorded and apparent-y lost painting by Peter Paul Rubens can be gleaned from the official correspondence of Jean Baptiste van Male, the diplomatic agent of the Archduchess Isabella in London. Letters exchanged in 1621-22 between Van Male and Charles della Faille, a principal secretary at the court of the Spanish Netherlands in Brussels, show that by May 1622 the artist completed a large picture of the Crucifixion with Mary, St John and Mary Magdalen, which was brought to London in September the same year for presentation to Sir George Calvert, the Secretary of State. To see why the archduchess asked her court painter to execute this commission, the diplomatic climate in which it was planned needs first to be reconstructed, before the r6les of the two officials who made the arrangements with Rubens are followed in their own words.

In contrast to the galaxy of famous seventeenth-century Dutch painters, draughtsmen, engravers, goldsmiths and tapestry- and damask-weavers, few Dutch furniture-makers from this era are known to us beyond the mere mention of their names in old documents. This is partly due to the relatively low status accorded at the time to traditional craftsmen of this type, the kistenmakers (chest makers), who mainly worked in oak and were usually known by their patronymic rather than a proper surname - a fact which confirms their modest standing and complicates any attempt at piecing together details of their lives from documentary sources. Thus, even in the rare cases where it has been possible to link the name of a kistenmaker to a surviving piece of furniture, the man himself necessarily remains a shadowy figure. This is the case, for instance, with the Alkmaar kistenmaker Jacob Willemszoon, who in 1638 made the oak kas, which still survives, to house the archives of the newly created Schermer polder. As required by the guild regulations, its elaborate carved decoration was executed by an ornamental sculptor (beeldsnijder), whose name was Cornelis Corneliszoon.' This type of col- laboration, which must have been common, further complicates any attempt to establish the artistic personality of individual furniture-makers.