To the three remarkable works I have quoted as examples of histories, with a variety of events treated in one and the same picture, I might add many more; but I will content myself with naming a work, too much neglected by modern travellers, in the chapel of San Felice, in the great church of St. Anthony, at Padua. It is by Aldighieri, a pupil of Giotto, and is, unfortunately, darkened by the erection of a huge insulated marble altar-piece before it. The subject is the Crucifixion. The journey of Christ to Calvary forms one great preparatory incident, the crucifixion itself, and its attendant miracles, the main action: and the casting lots for the sacred vestments, is the concluding scene.--This is not the place to speak of the pathos Aldighieri has thrown into the first division, the dignity amounting to grandeur in the main action, or the skilful grouping and expression of the last scene. But I think it will be allowed that the painter has done well to unite the two minor actions with the greater, and thus complete the history. The examples of one history carried on through a series of pictures, are so numerous that the difficulty lies in choosing the most striking. Cimabue’s and Giotto’s lives of Saint Francis at Assisi, where each event is the subject of a separate picture; and Giotto’s life of Christ and of the Virgin at Padua, may be thought by some readers too antiquated to form authorities for the practice. To such, therefore, I will recommend the example of Raffaelle in the Loggie, where the history of the Old Testament is carried on in that beautiful series of designs which ranges in order along the ceiling of those magnificent corridors[162]. Luini’s series of pictures at Saronno, Andrea del Sarto’s at Florence, and those of Domenichino at Grotto Ferrata, are among the finest works of these great masters. Every series contains a history. Luini’s are the life of the Virgin. Those of Andrea del Sarto relate to the life of Saint John the Baptist, and are among the most admired of his compositions. In one of the pictures at Grotto Ferrata, where Saint Nilus, the hero of the series, casts out the evil spirit from the demoniac boy, Domenichino strives not unsuccessfully against the demoniac in the Transfiguration, where, for once, it must be allowed, that Raffaelle has fallen below Domenichino in truth of expression. My third section of historical paintings is acknowledged by even those who object to the others. It contains such pictures as show a single action complete in itself.