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he designed with much more ease and practice than Georgione. There are to be seen women and children of his hand, which are admirable both for design and colouring; the gusto of them is delicate, charming, and noble, with a certain pleasing negligence in the headdresses, draperies, and ornaments, which are wholly peculiar to himself. As for the figures of men, he has designed them but moderately well: there are even some of his draperies which are mean, and in a little taste. His painting is wonderfully glowing, sweet and delicate. He drew portraits, which were extremely noble: the attitudes of them being very graceful, grave, diversified, and adorned after a very becoming fashion. No man ever painted landscape in so great a manner, so well coloured, and with such truth of nature. For eight or ten years' space, he copied, with great labour and exactness, whatsoever he undertook; thereby to make himself an easy way, and to establish some general maxims for his future conduct. Besides the excellent gusto which he had in colouring, in which he excelled all mortal men, he perfectly understood how to give every thing those touches which were most suitable and proper to them: such as distinguished them from each other, and which gave the greater spirit, and the most of truth. The pictures which he made in his beginning, and in the declension of his age, are of a dry and mean manner. He lived ninety-nine years. His disciples were Paulo Veronese, Giacomo Tintoret, Giacomo da Ponte Bassano, and his

sons.

Paulo Veronese was wonderfully graceful in his airs of women, with great variety of brilliant draperies, and incredible vivacity and ease; nevertheless his composition is sometimes improper, and his design incorrect: but his colouring, and whatsoever depends

on it, is so very charming in his pictures, that it surprises at the first sight, and makes us totally forget those other qualities in which he fails.

Tintoret was the disciple of Titian; great in design and practice, but sometimes also greatly extravagant. He had an admirable genius for Painting; but not so great an affection for his art, or patience in the executive part of it, as he had fire and vivacity of Nature. He yet has made pictures not inferior in beauty to those of Titian. His composition and decorations are for the most part rude, and his outlines are incorrect; but his colouring, and all that depends upon it, is admirable.

The Bassans had a more mean and poor gusto in Painting than Tintoret, and their designs were also less correct than his. They had indeed an excellent manner of colouring, and have touched all kinds of animals with an admirable hand; but were notoriously imperfect in composition and design.

Correggio painted at Parma two large cupolas in fresco, and some altar-pieces. This artist struck out certain natural and unaffected graces for his Madonnas, his Saints, and little children, which were peculiar to himself. His manner, design, and execution are all very great, but yet without correctness. He had a most free and delightful pencil; and it is to be acknowledged that he painted with a strength, relief, sweetness, and vivacity of colouring, which nothing ever exceeded. He understood how to distribute his lights in such a manner as was wholly peculiar to himself, which gave a great force and great roundness to his figures. This manner consists in extending a large light, and then making it lose itself insensibly in the dark shadowings, which he placed out of the masses; and those give them this relief, without our being able to

perceive from whence proceeds so much effect, and so vast a pleasure to the sight. It appears that in this part the rest of the Lombard school copied him. He had no great choice of graceful attitudes, or distribution of beautiful groups. His design oftentimes appears lame, and his positions not well chosen: the look of his figures is often unpleasing: but his manner of designing heads, hands, feet, and other parts, is very great, and well deserves our imitation. In the conduct and finishing of a picture, he has done wonders for he painted with so much union, that his greatest works seem to have been finished in the compass of one day, and appear as if we saw them in a lookingglass. His landscape is equally beautiful with his figures.

At the same time with Correggio, lived and flourished Parmegiano; who, besides his great manner of colouring, excelled also both in invention and design: with a genius full of delicacy and spirit, having nothing that was ungraceful in his choice of attitudes, or in the dresses of his figures, which we cannot say of Correggio; there are pieces of Parmegiano's very beautiful and correct.

These two Painters last mentioned had very good disciples, but they are known only to those of their own province; and besides, there is little to be credited of what his countrymen say, for Painting is wholly extinguished amongst them.

I say nothing of Leonardo da Vinci, because I have seen but little of his though he restored the arts at Milan, and had there many scholars.

Ludovico Carracci, the cousin-german of Hannibal and Augustino, studied at Parma after Correggio; and excelled in design and colouring, with a grace and clearness which Guido, the scholar of Hannibal, after

wards imitated with great success. There are some of his pictures to be seen, which are very beautiful, and well understood. He made his ordinary residence at Bologna; and it was he who put the pencil into the hands of Hannibal his cousin.

Hannibal, in a little time, excelled his master in all parts of Painting. He imitated Correggio, Titian, and Raffaelle, in their different manners as he pleased; excepting only, that you see not in his pictures the nobleness, the graces, and the charms of Raffaelle: and his outlines are neither so pure nor so elegant as his. In all other things he is wonderfully accomplished, and of an universal genius.

Augustino, brother to Hannibal, was also a very good Painter, and an admirable Graver. He had a natural son, called Antonio, who died at the age of thirty-five; and who (according to the general opinion) would have surpassed his uncle Hannibal: for, by what he left behind him, it appears that he was of a more lofty genius.

Guido chiefly imitated Ludovico Carracci, yet retained always somewhat of the manner which his Master Denis Calvert, the Fleming, taught him. This Calvert lived at Bologna, and was competitor and rival to Ludovico Carracci. Guido made the same use of Albert Durer as Virgil did of old Ennius, borrowed what pleased him, and made it afterwards his own; that is, he accommodated what was good in Albert to his own manner; which he executed with so much gracefulness and beauty, that he got more money and reputation in his time, than any of his masters, and than all the scholars of the Carraccis, though they were of greater capacity than himself. His heads yield no manner of precedence to those of Raffaelle. Sisto Badolocchi designed the best of all his disciples; but he died young.

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Domenichino was a very knowing Painter, and very laborious, but of no great natural endowments. It is true, he was profoundly skilled in all the parts of Painting, but wanting genius (as I said) he had less of nobleness in his works than all the rest who studied in the school of the Carraccis.

Albani was excellent in all the parts of Painting, and a polite scholar.

Landfranc, a man of a great and sprightly wit, supported his reputation for a long time with an extraordinary gusto of design and colouring; but his foundation being only on the practical part, he at length lost ground in point of correctness, so that many of his pieces appear extravagant and fantastical; and after his decease, the school of the Carraccis went daily to decay, in all the parts of Painting.

Gio. Viola was very old before he learned landscape the knowledge of which was imparted to him by Hannibal Carracci, who took pleasure to instruct him; so that he painted many of that kind, which are wonderfully fine and well coloured.

If we cast our eyes towards Gemany and the Low Countries, we may there behold Albert Durer, Lucas van Leyden, Holbein, Aldegrave, &c., who were all contemporaries. Amongst these, Albert Durer and Holbein were both of them wonderfully knowing, and had certainly been of the first form of Painters, had they travelled into Italy; for nothing can be laid to their charge, but only that they had a Gothic gusto. As for Holbein, his execution surpassed even that of Raffaelle; and I have seen a portrait of his painting, with which one of Titian's could not come in competition.

Amongst the Flemings appeared Rubens, who had, from his birth, a lively, free, noble, and universal

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