SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA.- Art historian Jaynie Anderson has made a list of the best seven works of Italian from a list of 100 works loaned to the National Gallery of Australia from the greatest public galleries and private collections in Italy. Anderson is recognized as one of the world's leading Renaissance scholars, author of the definitive biography of the artist Giorgione and Head of the School of Fine Arts, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Melbourne. She chose Rosso Fiorentino, Moses Defending the Daughters of Jethro, c 1523; Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence as number one on her list. This is one of the great masterpieces of Florentine mannerism by an artist who was very complex and used wonderful colors. Rosso painted it in the 1530s while he was working for the Medicis. He painted people in intense emotional states and he belonged to that generation of artists, after Michelangelo, who were obsessed by style.

Fra Galgario, Portrait of a Young Boy with Still Life; Accademia Carrara, Bergamo, was her second choice. He was a contemporary of Sir Joshua Reynolds and can be regarded as the Italian Reynolds. This is a very vivacious, affectionate portrait of a young artist who worked with him. Tanzio da Varallo, David with the Head of Goliath; Museo Civico (Palazzo dei Musei), Varallo, was her third choice. Tanzio was famous for the pilgrimage pictures he painted as part of the counter Reformation which tried to make the religious experience more accessible. Giuseppe Maria Crespi, The Fair at Poggio a Cajano, 1709; Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, was her fourth choice. This was one of a series on everyday life commissioned by the Medicis. It was very rare for an artist to be asked to document such scenes. Giovanni Battista Moroni, Portrait of the Cavalier in Pink, 1560; private collection, was her fifth choice. Moroni was the Titian of Lombardy, one of the great portrait painters of his time. Giorgione (attrib.), Double Portrait, c 1502; Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Venezia, Rome, was her sixth choice. Giorgione was a very inventive Venetian artist, a contemporary of Titian and Bellini, who lived all too briefly, from 1476 to 1510. Her seventh choice was Lorenzo Lotto, Altarpiece of the Annunciation to the Virgin, c 1534-35; Pinacoteca Nazionale, Recanati. This painting shows the Archangel Gabriel announcing to the Virgin that she is pregnant.