IN HIS LAST will and testament, written at Padua in his own hand and dated 1491, Pietro Priuli, Procurator of S. Marco de supra, requested ‘to be buried at S. Michele di Murano in my chapel, where a gravestone with its carved frame has been prepared, along with a floor covering of rose and white stones, as is the case around the altar; and I wish that a proper altarpiece (pala) be made, seeing that none has as yet been prepared’ (‘non esendo fata’; see Appendix 1 below).

BERNARDO BELLOTTO'S EARLY stylistic development was discussed in the first part of this article, in which several new attributions were suggested, mostly works which had previously been assumed to be by Canaletto. In this article it is suggested that a group of paintings, most of which have at one time or another been given to Bellotto, are, conversely, the work of an anonymous painter for whom the sobriquet the ‘Lyon Master’ is here proposed. This artist is distinct from Bellotto’s only known pupil in these years, his brother Pietro, to whose Venetian period some attributions are also advanced.

ANTHONY BLUNT NEVER much liked Surrealism. When, however, he reviewed the London International Surrealist exhibition of 1936, he accepted the fact that the English of a certain sort seemed to relish Surrealism in surprising quantities, which gave him an idea – a wicked idea. Perhaps, he suggested, an explanation could be found in ‘the repressive education and way of living characteristic of the English. After all the psychological confusions created in the average Englishman by a public school education are such that he may well find in front of a Superrealist painting that kind of sexual liberty and excitement which suits him. It may be that after a life of good, clean fun the sadism of Soft Construction with boiled apricots by Dalí . . . provides a healthy escape.’ Blunt’s wicked idea was a travelling exhibition of Surrealism especially for the English public schools: Surrealism as therapy for the great repressed of Winchester, Eton, Harrow and Marlborough.