part, however, are from unknown hands, and so well executed, that we are justified in suspecting that they must have been retouched about the times of Lippo Dalmasio, to whose style a few of them bear considerable resemblance. Yet not so with others; more especially a specimen in San Pietro, which I consider to be one of the most ancient preserved in Italy. But the finest monument of painting possessed by Bologna, at once the most unique and untouched, is the Catino of San Stefano, on which is figured the Adoration of the Lamb of God, described in the Apocalypse; and below this are several scriptural histories; as the Birth of our Lord, his Epiphany, the Dispute, and similar subjects. The author was either Greek, or rather a scholar of those Greeks who ornamented the church of St. Mark in Venice with their mosaics; the manner much resembling theirs in its rude design, the spareness of the limbs, and in the distribution of the colours. It is besides, certain, that these Greeks educated several artists for Italy, and among others the founder of the Ferrarese School, of whom more in its appropriate place. However this may be, the painter exhibits traces that differ from those mosaic workers, such as the flow of the beard, the shape of the garments, and a taste less bent on thronging his compositions. And in respect to his age, it is apparent it must have been between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, from the form of the characters, collated with other writings belonging to the same period.

Entering upon the age of Giotto, the most disputed of all, on account of the Florentines having declared themselves the tutors of the Bolognese, and the aversion of the latter to admit that they have been instructed by the Florentines;—I decline to dwell upon their writings, in which the heat of controversy has effectually obscured the candour of real history. I shall rather gather light from the figures of the trecentisti dispersed throughout the city and all parts of Romagna, and from the ample collections which are to be seen in various places. Such is that of the Padri Classensi at Ravenna, that of the Institute at Bologna, and in the same place one at the Malvezzi palace, where the pictures of the ancient masters are exhibited in long series, with their names; not always inscribed, indeed, in ancient character, nor always equally genuine; but still calculated to reflect honour upon the noble family that made the collection. In all these I discovered paintings, some manifestly Greek; some indisputably Giottesque; certain others of Venetian style; and not a few in a manner which I never saw, except in Bologna. They possess a body of colouring, a taste in perspective, a method of designing and draping the figures, not met with in any other cities; as for instance, in several places I saw scripture histories, where the Redeemer invariably appears arrayed in a red mantle; while other characters appear in garments trimmed in a certain novel style with gilt borders; trifles in themselves, yet not apparent in any other school. From similar observations we seem to be justified in concluding that the Bolognese of that age likewise had a school of their own, not indeed so elegant, nor so celebrated, but nevertheless peculiar, and so to say, municipal, derived from ancient masters of mosaic, and also from those in miniature.

On this head, notwithstanding our proposed brevity, I must here refer to the words of Baldinucci in his notices of the miniature painter, Franco: "After Giotto, that very celebrated Florentine painter, had discovered his novel and fine method by which he gained the name of the first restorer of the art of painting, or rather to have raised it from utter extinction; and after he had acquired with industrious diligence that fine mode of painting which is called di minio,[2] which for the most part consists in colouring very diminutive figures; many others also applied themselves to the like art, and soon became illustrious. One of these was Oderigi d'Agubbio, concerning whom we have spoken in his proper place among the disciples of Cimabue. We discovered that this Oderigi, as we are assured by Vellutello in his comment upon Dante, in the eleventh canto of the Purgatorio,[3] was master in the art to Franco Bolognese, which assertion acquires great credit from his having worked much in miniature in the city of Bologna, according to these words that I find said of him by Benvenuto da Imola, a contemporary of Petrarch, in his comment upon Dante: 'Iste Odorisius fuit magnus miniator in civitate Bononiæ, qui erat valde vanus jactator artis suæ.' From this Franco, according to the opinion of Malvasia, the most noble and ever glorious city of Bologna received the first seeds of the beautiful art of painting."

With this narrative does the author proceed, like a careful culturist, gently sprinkling with refreshing drops his pictoric tree, whose seed he had shortly before planted, in order to trace the whole derivation of early artists from the leading stock of Cimabue. It has elsewhere been observed that this famous tree can boast no root in history; that it sprung out of idle conjectures, put together as an answer to the Felsina Pittrice of Malvasia, in which the Bolognese School is made to appear, as it were, autoctona, derived only from itself. Now Baldinucci, in order to give its origin to Florence, would persuade us that Oderigi, a miniaturist, and master of Franco, the first painter at Bologna on the revival of the arts, had actually been a disciple of Cimabue. His argument amounts to this: that Dante, Giotto, and Oderigi, being known to have lived on the most intimate terms together, and all three greatly devoted to the fine arts, must have contracted their friendship in the school of Cimabue; as if such an intimacy might not have sprung up at any other time or place amongst three men who travelled. It is besides difficult to believe that Oderigi, ambitious of the fame of a miniaturist in ornamenting books, should have applied to Cimabue, who in those times was not the best designer of figures, though the most eminent painter in fresco, and of grand figures.

A more probable supposition, therefore, is that Oderigi acquired the art from the miniaturists, who then greatly abounded in Italy, and carried it to further perfection by his own design. Neither are the epochs themselves, fixed upon by Baldinucci, in favour of his system. He would have it that Giotto, at ten years of age, being about the year 1286, began to design in the school of Cimabue, when the latter had attained his forty-sixth year; nor could Oderigi have been any younger, whose death happened about 1299, one year before that of Cimabue, his equal in reputation, and in the dignity of the pupil, who already surpassed the master. How difficult then to persuade ourselves that a genius, described by Dante as lofty and full of vaunting, should demean himself by deigning to design at the school of a contemporary, near the seat of a mere child; and subsequently surviving only thirteen years, should acquire the fame of the first miniaturist of his age, besides forming the mind of a pupil superior to himself. It is no less incredible that Oderigi, after