Despite the growing interest of modern scholars in early-Renaissance civic architecture as the bearer of meaning, the public buildings of Dubrovnik (It. Ragusa; Lat. Ragusium) have received less attention than their due. This is all the more regrettable because when some of the city's monuments are seen in their appropriate historical perspective, they turn out to be more important than many scholars would have expected.

My case in point is Dubrovnik's principal government building, the so-called Rector's Palace (Palatium regiminis, Knežev dvor, or the Palazzo de'Rettori) When the fortress-like structure, which had been built in the fourteenth century, was severely damaged in 1435 by a gunpowder explosion in the armory, the authorities immediately decided to erect a new palace. Its construction was entrusted to the state engineer Onofrio di Giordano della Cava of Naples, under whose direction it was virtually completed by 1452 — only to be severely damaged by another explosion of ammunition in 1463.

Scholarly discussion of late Quattrocento art patronage in Mantua has largely been confined to projects associated with Isabella d'Este (1474-1539, marchesa from 1490 and dowager marchesa from 1519). And yet in 1494 her husband wrote that “painting delights us not a little and by its pleasures we often relax and console our mind from the various occupations, anxieties, and cares in which it is involved.” Francesco II Gonzaga's effulgent praise of the visual arts suggests that he (1466-1519, marquis from 1484) was rather more consequential for the cultural life of the state than has usually been allowed.

In an article recently published in this journal, I argued that a certain, often discussed, hybrid encountered in Bronzino's wellknown painting depicting The Exposure of Luxury (ca. 1545, National Gallery, London; also known as Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time) was actually intended to represent a “sphinx” [fig. 1]. Whatever its proper designation, this is the bizarre figure that may be espied lurking in darkness (as much metaphorical as physical), just as she/it was placed in the middle ground of the far right side of Bronzino's carefully contrived composition [fig. 2]. This darkly crouching creature was situated by the ingenious painter behind the brightly illuminated figure of a nude and joyful putto tossing roses, so making it literally hidden (occulta).

On 9 May 1611 James I broke with a royal custom that had been established for more than a century of Tudor rule. He attended the trial of the pyx at the Royal Mint in the city of London. This yearly ceremony was for the formal testing of sovereign moneys. It was designed to ensure that the manufacture of various denominations conformed to current standards set by the crown. While his Tudor predecessors had allowed previous trials to continue unattended by majesty, James's presence at the pyx in 1611 provided the occasion for a striking display of royal power.

In the decades immediately following the Spanish Civil War, the question of the Renaissance, which had never attracted much scholarly attention even before the war, almost completely disappeared from consideration in Spanish historical thought. Concerned with seeking a psycho-historical explanation of the catastrophic event which had shattered the political and social fabric of their society, historians turned more than ever to the Middle Ages in search of those peculiar strains that presumably shaped the national character and which in turn would provide an answer to past and present events. The reappearance of this romantic search for the elusive “popular spirit” of the nation was nowhere more evident than in the teachings of two major historians who from their exile in the Americas were to exert for quite some time an exorbitant influence on a new generation of scholars both within and outside of Spain.