themselves to their own peculiar taste. B. Schidone died young in 1615. Barto. Schidone, Guido Reni,* Giovanni Lanfranco, Francesco Albani, Domenico Zampieri, and Francesco Barbieri, called Guercino, differed as much in their objects of imitation as their names. Schidone, all of whose mind was in his eye, embraced, and often to meaner subjects applied the harmony and colour of Correggio, whilst Lanfranco strove, but strove without success, to follow him through the expanse of his creation and masses. Grace attracted Guido, but it was the studied grace of theatres: his female forms are abstracts of antique beauty, attended by languishing attitudes, arrayed by voluptuous fashions. His male forms, transcripts of models, such as are found in a genial climate, are sometimes highly characteristic of dignified manhood or apostolic fervour, like his Peter and Paul, formerly in the Zampieri at Bologna: sometimes stately,

* Guido Reni died in 1642, aged 68. Giov. Lanfranco died at Naples in 1647, aged 66. Franc. Albani died in 1660, aged 82. Domenico Zampieri, called Il Domenichino, died in 1641, aged 60. Franc. Barbieri of Cento, called Il Guercino, from a cast in his eye, died in 1667, aged 76.

courteous, insipid, like his Paris attending Helen, more with the air of an ambassador, by proxy, than carrying her off with a lover's fervour. His Aurora deserved to precede a more majestic sun, and hours less clumsy-his colour varies with his style, sometimes bland and harmonious, sometimes vigorous and stern, sometimes flat and insipid. Albani, chiefly attracted by soft mythologic conceits, formed nereids and oreads on plump Venetian models, and contrasted their pearly hues with the rosy tints of loves, the juicy brown of fauns and satyrs, and rich marine or sylvan scenery Domenichino, more obedient than the rest to his masters, aimed at the beauty of the antique, the expression of Raphael, the vigour of Annibale, the colour of Lodovico, and mixing something of each, fell short of all; whilst Guercino broke like a torrent over all academic rules, and with an ungovernable itch of copying whatever lay in his way, sacrificed mind, form and costume, to effects of colour, fierceness of chiaroscuro, and intrepidity of hand.

Such was the state of art when the spirit of machinery, in submission to the vanities and upstart pride of papal nepotism, destroyed what

yet was left of meaning; when equilibration, contrast, grouping, engrossed composition, and poured a deluge of gay common-place over the platfonds, panels and cupolas of palaces and temples. Those who could not conceive a figure singly, scattered multitudes; to count, was to be poor. The rainbow and the seasons were ransacked for their hues, and every eye became the tributary of the great but abused talents of Pietro da Cortona, and the fascinating but debauched and empty facility of Luca Giordano.*

The same revolution of mind that had organized the arts of Italy, spread, without visible communication, to Germany, and towards the decline of the fifteenth century, the uncouth essays of Martin Schön, Michael Wolgemuth, and Albrecht Altorfer, were succeeded by the finer polish and the more dextrous method of Albert Durer. The indiscriminate use

* Pietro Berretini, of Cortona, the painter of the ceiling in the Barberini hall, and of the gallery in the lesser Pamphili palace, the vernal suavity of whose fresco tints no pencil ever equalled, died at Rome in 1669, aged 73. Luca Giordano, nicknamed Fa-presto, or Dispatch, from the rapidity of his execution, the greatest machinist of his time, died in 1705, aged 76.

of the words genius and talent has perhaps nowhere caused more confusion than in the classification of artists. Albert Durer was in my opinion a man of great ingenuity, without being a genius. He studied, and, as far as his penetration reached, established certain proportions of the human frame, but he did not invent a style every work of his is a proof that he wanted the power of imitation, of concluding from what he saw, to what he did not see, that he copied rather than selected the forms that surrounded him, and sans remorse tacked deformity and meagerness to fulness, and sometimes to beauty. Such is his design; in composi

* We are informed by the Editor of the Latin translation of Albert Durer's book, on the symmetry of the parts of the human frame, (Parisiis, in officina Caroli Perier in vico Bellovaco, sub Bellerophonte, 1557, fol.) that, during Albert's stay at Venice, where he resided for a short time, to procure redress from the Signoria for the forgery of Marc Antonio, he became familiar with Giovanni Bellini: and that Andrea Mantegna, who had heard of his arrival in Italy, and had conceived a high opinion of his execution and fertility, sent him a message of invitation to Mantoua, for the express purpose of giving him an idea of that form of which he himself had obtained a glimpse from the contemplation of the antique. Andrea was then ill, and expired before Albert, who immediately prepared to set out for Mantoua, could profit by his in

tion copious without taste, anxiously precise in parts, and unmindful of the whole, he has rather shown us what to avoid than what to follow. He sometimes had a glimpse of the sublime, but it was only a glimpse: the expanded agony of Christ on the mount of Olives, and the mystic conception of his figure of Melancholy, are thoughts of sublimity, though the expression of the last is weakened by the rubbish he has thrown about her. His Knight attended by Death and the Fiend, is more capricious than terrible; and his Adam and Eve are two common models shut up in a structions. This disappointment, says my author, Albert never ceased to lament during his life. How fit the Mantouan was to instruct the German, is not the question here; but Albert's regret seems to prove that he felt a want which his model could not supply; and that he had too just an idea of the importance of the art to be proud of dexterity of finger or facility of execution, when employed on objects. essentially defective or comparatively trifling. The following personal account of Albert deserves to be given in the Latin Editor's own words: E Pannonia oriundum accepimus -Erat caput argutum, oculi micantes, nasus honestus et quem Greci Terpάywvov vocant; proceriusculum collum, pectus amplum, castigatus venter, femora nervosa, crura stabilia : sed digitis nihil dixisses vidisse elegantius.'

Albert Durer was the scholar of Martin Schön and Michael Wolgemuth, and died at Nuremberg in 1528, aged 57.