Zanobi Strozzi(1412-68) was a close follower of Fra Angelico, and his works are frequently confused with those of Angelico's other pupils, particularly Domenico di Michelino and the Master of the Buckingham Palace Madonna.1 Recorded mainly as a manuscript illuminator, Zanobi is also known to have painted panels, although no securely documented example survives and no signed works have hitherto been discovered. A painted cross now in the Parish Church of Mocogno, near Modena, which has been identified with the funerary cross from S. Marco, Florence, for which Strozzi was paid in March 1448, is too damaged to be of compara- tive use,2 and Strozzi's documented altar-piece for the Chapel of S. Agnese in S. Egidio (S. Maria Nuova), Florence - for which he was paid between 1434 and 1439 - is not certainly identifiable, although a possible candidate has been proposed and will be discussed below.3 The discovery of his name on the recently cleaned and restored Annunciation in the National Gallery (Fig.4) is therefore extremely important in provid- ing a touchstone for the attribution of panel paintings to Zanobi. This article publishes the 'signature' for the first time and examines the problems of the picture's dating, provenance and patronage.

During 1953 Roger Hilton engaged in an extended correspondence with the Dutch artist Constant (Constant Nieuwenhuys, b.1920). A close relationship had developed between the two men as a result of Constant's stay in London for three months on a British Council grant and Hilton's return with him to Holland in February 1953, during which visit Hilton encountered the paintings of Mondrian. The correspondence extended from mid-March to November 1953 and included at least eleven letters, nine of which survive. It involved a dialogue on artistic ideas which is characteristic of Constant's international contact-making and sense of his role as an avant-garde catalyst of the wider cultural repositionings he deemed necessary to help effect the reconstruction of society.' While this exchange reflects - but cannot be said to have inflected - the dynamic of Constant's theorising, for Hilton it undoubtedly had a more fundamental impact. Indeed he was quite explicit about the decisive 'influence of Constant via Mondrian' at this point in his development.2

Anyone interested in the history of collecting is aware that, despite the many references to collections of drawings in sixteenth-century Italy, there are all too few corroborating documents such as inventories. Indeed, so sparse is the evidence that historical assessment of the phenomenon has been largely based on hypothesis. Even the full nature and scope of Vasari's celebrated Libro di Disegni remain unresolved, given the paucity of verifiable information we have about it, although it seems clear enough that Vasari must have established a standard for collectors in Rome and Tuscany, as well as disseminating the notion that drawings could be of histor- ical value as well as a source of aesthetic pleasure.'

The exhibition The Private Collection of Edgar Degas, held at the Metropolitan Museum, New York, in 1997-98, was a remarkable event, not only for the impressive quantity of works it assembled and their beauty, but also for the reflections they provoked when seen together. Marking the culmination of research carried out in recent years - by Ann Dumas, Anne Roquebert and, in preparation for the show, by the Metropolitan Museum team - it also provides the starting point for new investigations. Developing out of a much smaller 'dossier' show held at the National Gallery, London, in 1996, which was conceived as a complement to the exhibition Degas beyond Impressionism,' the New York display was the fruit of important and painstaking work identifying and tracing works of art owned by Degas, and would deserve high commendation on this score alone, quite apart from its other obvious merits.