It is now nearly a quarter of a century since Tate made the division of its displays between British art on Millbank and modern and contemporary art at Bankside. In that time, the permanent collection shown at Tate Britain has been comprehensively redisplayed four times. An Editorial in this Magazine in 2000 on Tate Britain’s inaugural hang criticised the decision to abandon chronology in favour of thematic groupings (such as ‘landscape’, ‘the nude’ and ‘city life’) in imitation of Tate Modern, and concluded, ‘the opportunity must be seized to present a comprehensive, well-paced, beautifully hung, chronologically based and intellectually coherent conspectus of the development of British art’

On the 400th anniversary of the election of Maffeo Barberini as Pope Urban VIII, an exhibition at Palazzo Barberini, Rome, has brought together examples of the spectacular patronage of the arts for which he and his three nephews were responsible.

The identification of the figures in the foreground of Piero della Francesca’s ‘Flagellation’ can be elucidated by an unpublished Wardrobe list of Palazzo Ducale, Urbino. Compiled in 1488–92, it sheds light on the court’s use of dress and reveals that the pattern of the right-hand figure’s gown was worn by only one man, Ottaviano Ubaldini della Carda, the brother of Duke Federico di Montefeltro.