ABSTRACT
In March 1978 the editor of The Burlington Magazine, Benedict Nicolson, celebrated the 900th number of the journal by reflecting on the enormous social changes that had occurred during the seventy-five years since the Burlington had first appeared in March 1903. As he said, 1903 “was a different age”: during that year, Lord Rosebery held a party for the inmates of the Epsom workhouse to celebrate his son’s coming of age and Edward VII became the first English monarch to be received by a Pope since the Reformation. Nicolson also noted “many pleasing symbols of continuity” that had survived the vicissitudes of the twentieth century, including The Burlington Magazine itself.1 For in 1978 the Burlington remained dedicated to the exposition of “scientific” connoisseurship that had inspired its creation in 1903. The same is true today for, apparently immune to the impact of critical theory on the discipline of art history, the authority of the Burlington still resides in its reputation for publishing the most significant attributions and discoveries made in Italian archives and the corridors of English country houses, and their impact on the unending project of (re)forming the canon.
