The author rejects the attribution of the discussed painting to Raphael, which has been admitted almost unanimously since 1970. The previous idea was based on two mistakes: an inaccurate interpretation of the results of conservation carried then and the groundless identification of the London painting with the one exhibited in the sixteenth century in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome. The detailed examination of the stylistic features of the both famous portraits of Julius II - in London and the Uffizi Gallery - leads the author to the primacy of the latter one, which is probably the original of Raphael, painted possibly after the cartoon preserved in the Collezine Corsini in Florence, but not after the one from Chatsworth as supposed before. The London painting was a workshop copy painted probably ca 1516 by Giovanni Francesco Penni.
Combining technical and historical research, a paper conservator and an art historian study a recently discovered work by Paul Gauguin. The small painting of a Breton Girl by the Sea, signed and dated 1889, has altered significantly in colour and tonal relations over time. Fugitive colour has faded and the paper support has darkened. Scientific techniques are used to recover a more precise idea of its original appearance. Technical study shows that the painting was carefully developed from underdrawing to painted surface in a procedure very similar to Gauguin's painting practice. Media, palette and execution can be related to other primitivizing works of 1889 and their pre-Raphaelite and non-Western "Oriental" sources.