private and public exhibitions, sufficient to engage the curiosity of cultivated strangers for a period of many days.

The city in the meanwhile was not deficient in native artists of superior genius, such as Venusti, Manfredi, and Facchetti; all of whom, on account of their residence in Rome, we have treated of in that school; while in that of Parma we shall have occasion to insert the name of Giorgio del Grano, supposed to be of Mantua, and of Andrea Scutellari in that of Cremona, in which he became fixed. Francesco Borgani is one of those who resided in his native place, and who adopted a good style from the paintings of Parmigianino, in which he composed several pictures in S. Pietro, in S. Simone, in S. Croce, as well as in other places, by which he deserves to be better known than he now is. This artist flourished until the latter half of the past century.

Towards the same period Giovanni Canti, while yet young, came from Parma and settled in Mantua, an artist whose merits, consisting in his landscapes and battle-scenes, are to be sought for in galleries of art, not in the specimens of his altar-pieces in churches, which are very inferior. He was one of those who lay too much stress on their rapidity of hand. Schivenoglia, whose proper name was Francesco Ranieri, was one of his scholars, equally distinguished for his battles as for his landscape; superior to his master in design, but inferior in point of colouring. Next to him Giovanni Cadioli was considered a good landscape painter, and better in fresco than in oils. He wrote an account of the pictures of Mantua, and at the same period was one of the earliest founders and the first director of the academy for design at that place.

Giovanni Bazzani, a pupil of Canti, was endowed with a higher genius for the art than his master, and laid a better foundation for excellence by the cultivation of his mind, by careful study, and by copying from the most esteemed models. He more particularly directed his attention towards Rubens, whose footsteps he diligently pursued to the end of his career. He was long employed in Mantua and in its adjacent monastery, principally in works of fresco, displaying an easy, spirited, and imaginative character, in a manner that does credit to his genius. He was universally allowed to possess uncommon powers, but being crippled and infirm, he was unable to exhibit them as he wished; and besides, the rapid manner acquired from Canti, diminished, for the most part, the value of his works.

Giuseppe Bottani of Cremona, educated at Rome under Masucci, afterwards established himself in Mantua, where he acquired the reputation of a good landscape painter in the manner of Poussin, and of a good figurist in that of Maratta. His best pictures are found beyond the confines of the city; in a church at Milan, dedicated to Saints Cosma and Damiano, is to be seen a Santa Paola by his hand, taking farewell of the domestics, a piece by no means inferior to that of Batoni, which is placed at its side. It had been well for his reputation as an artist had he always exerted himself with equal care, for in every composition he might have approved himself an excellent disciple of the school of Rome. His extreme haste, however, rendered him inconsistent with himself, so that in the city where he taught, there can hardly be enumerated one or two specimens among the great number he produced in public, which can at all vie with the Milanese. The reader may have already learned, in the course of this work, that of all faults celerity is one of the most fatal to the reputation of artists; the rock upon which many of the finest geniuses have struck. To few, indeed, has it been given to produce with rapidity and to produce well.

The academy of Mantua not only still exists, but has been furnished by the princes of the house of Austria with splendid rooms, with select casts, and other advantages for the improvement of youth, so as to render it one of the finest academies in Italy.[3] There have appeared, under the auspices of Signor Volta, one of its members, compendious notices of the artists of Mantua, down from the year 1777; an earnest of a more extended work that we are in hopes of receiving from his able and accomplished pen. With these notices, as well as others afforded us in conversation with the same enlightened scholar, we have been glad to enrich the present chapter. Nor have we failed to keep in view the two Discourses upon the Letters and the Arts of Mantua, recited in the academy, and afterwards made public by the Sig. Abate Bettinelli, in which his character, as a fluent orator, and a diligent historian, in the various notes he has added, appears to equal advantage.

[3] Upon the establishment of the Italian republic, according to what I have recently heard from the learned P. Pompilio Pozzetti Scolopio, public librarian at Modena, the academies were reduced to two; the one in Bologna, the other in Milan; and in the rest of the cities they continue to exist as schools of the fine arts. To both of these the government is extremely favourable, as well as to letters, both very interesting objects of public education. And now, by the union of the Venetian states, the academy of Venice is greatly strengthened and increased, established by decree of the government in the year 1724.

CHAPTER II.

THE MODENESE SCHOOL.

EPOCH I.

The Ancients.

The state of Modena, such as it is now reunited under the happy government of the house of Este, will form the subject of the following chapter; and no other portion of my work can be pronounced superior in point of interest to this. Since the feeble attempts of Vedriani, and of other writers, more eager than sagacious, the pictoric history of the entire dominion has been recently illustrated, as I observed at the commencement, by a distinguished historian. I have no further object in view than to adapt it to my usual method, omitting at the same time a few names, which, either from their mediocrity, from the loss of their works, or other reasons, cannot be presumed to be greatly interesting to my readers.

The antiquity of this school may be sought for as far back as 1235, at least if it may be supposed that Berlingeri of Lucca, certainly the author of a S. Francesco remaining in the castle of Guiglia, painted in the above year, likewise produced pupils to the state of Modena, a matter which is still involved in doubt. There is another sacred figure, also the production of a Modenese, consisting of the Blessed Virgin, between two military saints, a picture brought from Prague into the Imperial Gallery at Vienna. We read inscribed upon it in ancient character the two following lines:—

Quis opus hoc finxit? Thomas de Mutina pinxit;

Quale vides Lector Rarisini filius auctor;

in which we ought to read Barisini, both on account of Sig. Garampi, who is profoundly skilled in the ancient characters, having thus understood it, and because this name approaches nearer to those which, though certainly different, are known to apply to the father of Tommaso, as well in Modena as in Trevigi. In the former I know not that there now remains any thing of him but the name; but in the latter is to be seen a very extensive