When all reservations are made, the Eclectics had fairly done their work of correcting the disorder of the late Renaissance and of restoring something of the old decorum. They made possible the revival of the grand style at Rome, in the eighteenth century, by Carlo Maratta and Raphael Mengs. The Eclectics were the bridge by which the classical manner passed over into Western Europe, an indispensable link in the chain of the great hellenistic tradition. That should be enough to keep them in memory if not in unqualified honor. Our review of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth, century in Italy will have served its purpose if it has convinced the reader that this was no time of stagnation. We have rather to do with activities of exploration and reconstruction which are much too restless and various. The intellectual power of the Italian painters had not greatly diminished in comparison with the Renaissance. Italy still was capable of giving the leads which have guided painting elsewhere ever since. What was lacking was not energy but patience, reflection and taste. The Italian artist tended to regard himself as a swift and resolute executant first of all, and no longer knew how to nourish his spirit as a man. Even as executants, the realists and eclectics had the humiliation of finding themselves outdone by foreigners. Successively in the seventeenth century Ribera, Rubens, Van Dyck, Velasquez, Claude Lorrain and Poussin came to Italy and sojourned there. It was in every case apparent that the foreigner excelled all native artists in his field. The traditional authority of Italian painting still held, but its contemporary glory was evidently waning.