In recent years Antonio del Pollaiuolo's panel painting of the Elevation of the Magdalen (Fig. 1) has enjoyed better fortune in the town for which it was painted - where it is housed in a special museum - than in the literature on the Pollaiuolo brothers, where it has been relatively neglected. In this arti- cle I shall be reassessing the significance of the painting and the evidence for its patronage.*

It was rare for an artist in pre-nineteenth-century Europe to execute a fresco-cycle single-handedly, from conception to completion. To speed the decoration of a building in late sixteenth-century Rome, the commission would often be divided between several painters,' each of whom might bring in his own team of frescoists and stucco workers. Or a single artist might be appointed as director, who would then select and co-ordinate a group of painters of equal standing.2 Since clear documentation is seldom available, however, the interaction between artists has traditionally remained difficult to study. The team employed by Pope Sixtus V Peretti (1585- 90) was notoriously large, involving some twenty painters at different points in time. In addition to Cesare Nebbia and Giovanni Guerra who superintended the projects, we find Baglione mentioning, among others, Ferraui Fenzoni, Paul Bril, Andrea Lilio, Giacomo Stella, Giovanni Battista Pozzo and Paris Nogari. The present article will focus on several frescoes attributed to these painters in the Sistine Chapel in S. Maria Maggiore and the Scala Santa in Rome. It aims to shed light on the circumstances of their creation through the analysis of several newly discovered preliminary drawings.