1. It would seem likely that the money Theo had sent was the allowance for January; had it been the extra for December which Vincent had so urgently requested in letter 476, he would probably have thanked Theo for it sooner. This could mean that a letter (confirming the receipt of this extra money) has been lost.

2. There are several small pen-and-ink drawings of heads from this period which could have been part of this planned consignment: see letter 475, n. 1.

3. There is no known letter from Mrs van Gogh, but there is one from her husband, who wrote to Theo on Tuesday, 30 December 1884 thanking him for all his help that year: ‘You help constantly in what you do and did for Vincent and for Cor too, you have faithfully sent us all something’ (FR b2264). Because Theo’s parents usually both wrote to Paris, and his father says here that he is replying to a letter from Theo of 8 December (which means there was relatively little contact that month), this not only increases the chances that his mother also added a few lines on the occasion of the New Year, but also that Vincent’s letter was part of it.

4. Jo van Gogh-Bonger noted here in Brieven 1914: ‘The reference is to a painting by the Swedish painter Josephson – the preliminary study for his painting, De Waternix, which became famous later’ (vol. 2, p. 457).

5. This remark could be based on Van Gogh’s reading of Hugo’s William Shakespeare. Hugo had said in this context: ‘Once the depths of Hell have been touched, Dante passes through it, and rises up on the other side of the infinite’. (Le fond de l’enfer touché, Dante le perce, et remonte de l’autre côté de l’infini). See Hugo 1864, p. 93. We know from letter 155 that Van Gogh was familiar with this book.

6. In his Divine comedy (1313-1321) Dante Alighieri describes how he descended into hell, whence he also returned. Vincent therefore did not understand why Theo compared the water nymph to Dante.

7. The sophisticated seducer Mephistopheles, the devil in the story of Faust.

8. The ‘people’ who wrote this was the sixteenth-century biographer of artists Giorgio Vasari. Van Gogh derived his knowledge from Jules Michelet, L’amour, the start of book 5, chapter 4: ‘Vasari said a remarkable thing about the old master Giotto, creator of Italian art: “The first thing he puts in the facial expressions is goodness.”’ (Vasari a dit un mot remarquable sur le vieux maître Giotto, créateur de l’art italien: “Dans l’expression des têtes, le premier il mit la bonté.”) (Michelet, L’amour, p. 381). Cf. also Pabst 1988, p. 30.

9. Giotto painted Dante’s likeness in his frescoes in the Palazzo del Podestà and in the Santa Croce in Florence. Ill. 875 . Although there are now doubts as to whether the paintings in the Palazzo are by Giotto, at this time it was still assumed that they were authentic. There were drawings of the portrait in circulation, and no doubt reproductions too.