persons, and that such connections often rest on tenuous circumstantial evidence. The identities of a number of well-known artists have been founded on the basis of a single signed, documented or otherwise attributed work, from which follow further attributions based on technical evidence and geographical proximity. The so-called Master of the Legend of the Magdalen, who may have been Pieter van Coninxloo, is one of the more notable examples; others include Hugo van der Goes, Campin, Stefan Lochner and Simon Marmion. The lack of surviving theoretical writing on art and recorded opinion from any of the pre-16th-century major artists presents still more difficulties in attribution. Dürer, in 1512, was the first artist of the era to properly set down in writing his theories of art, followed by Lucas de Heere in 1565 and Karel van Mander in 1604. Nash believes a more probable explanation for the absence of theoretical writing on art outside Italy is that the northern artists did not yet have the language to describe their aesthetic values, or saw no point in explaining in writing what they had achieved in painting. Surviving 15th-century appreciations of contemporary Netherlandish art are exclusively written by Italians, the best known of which include Cyriacus Ancona in 1449, Bartolomeo Facio in 1456, and Giovanni Santi in 1482. Rediscovery The dominance of Northern Mannerism in the mid-16th century was built on a subversion of the conventions of Early Netherlandish art, which in turn fell out of public favour. Yet it remained popular in some royal art collections; Mary of Hungary and Philip II of Spain both sought out Netherlandish painters, sharing a preference for van der Weyden and Bosch. By the early 17th century, no collection of repute was complete without 15th- and 16th-century northern European works; the emphasis however tended to be on the Northern Renaissance as a whole, more towards the German Albrecht Dürer, by far the most collectable northern artist of the era. Giorgio Vasari in 1550 and Karel van Mander (c. 1604) placed the art works of era at the heart of Northern Renaissance art. Both writers were instrumental in forming later opinion about the region's painters, with emphasis on van Eyck as the innovator. The Netherlandish painters were largely forgotten in the 18th century. When Musée du Louvre was converted to an art gallery during the French Revolution, Gerard David's Marriage at Cana – then attributed to van