At the age of five years, the natural taste of Lucia Giordano for painting, led him to adopt the pencil as a plaything; at six he could draw the human figure with surprising correctness. The Cav. Stanzioni, passing by his father's shop, and seeing the child at work, stopped to see his performances, and is said to have predicted that "he would one day become the first painter of the age." Before he was eight years old he painted, unknown to his father, two cherubs in a fresco, entrusted to that artist, in an obscure part of the church of S. Maria Nuova--figures so graceful as to attract considerable attention. This fact coming to the knowledge of the Duke de Medina de las Torres, the Viceroy of Naples, he rewarded the precocious painter with some gold ducats, and recommended him to the instruction of Spagnoletto, then the most celebrated painter in Naples, who accordingly received him into his studio. There, says Palomino, he spent nine years in close application to study, and there, he probably enjoyed the advantage of seeing Velasquez, during that great artist's second visit to Naples. GIORDANO'S ENTHUSIASM. When Giordano was about seventeen years old, having learned from Ribera all he could teach him, he conceived a strong desire to prosecute his studies at Rome. To this step, his father, who was poor, and could perhaps ill afford to lose his earnings, refused to give his consent. Luca therefore embraced the earliest opportunity to abscond, and ran away on foot to the metropolis of art, where he applied himself with the greatest assiduity. He copied all the great frescos of Raffaelle in the Vatican several times; he next turned his rapid pencil against the works of Annibale Caracci in the Farnese palace. Meantime, his father divining the direction which the truant had taken, followed him to Rome, where, after a long search, he discovered him sketching in St. Peter's church. LUCA FA PRESTO. Giordano resided at Rome about three years with his father, who seems to have been a helpless creature, subsisting by the sale of his son's drawings; but Luca cared for nothing but his studies, satisfied with a piece of bread or a few maccaroni. When their purse was low, the old man would accompany him to the scene of his labors, and constantly urge him on, by repeating _Luca, fa presto_, (hurry Luca) which became a byword among the painters, and was fixed upon the young artist as a nickname, singularly appropriate to his wonderful celerity of execution. He afterwards traveled through Lombardy to Venice, still accompanied by his father, and having studied the works of Correggio, Titian, and other great masters, returned by way of Florence and Leghorn to Naples, where he soon after married the Donna Margarita Ardi, a woman of exquisite beauty, who served him as a model for his Virgins, Madonnas, Lucretias, and Venuses. GIORDANO'S SKILL IN COPYING.