Among the minor fathers of the art who not unworthily supported the glory of the sixteenth century, and who continue the history of painting in the Roman and Florentine schools through the remainder of that period, the chief were the immediate disciples of Raphael and Michael Angelo. The favorite pupil of the former, Julio Romano, was an artist of highly poetic imagination, but less informed with pure taste than his master; his ambition appears to have aimed at uniting the grace of his instructer with the science and energy of Florence. Penni, Perin del Vaga, Polidore Caravaggio, and Maturino, not unsuccessfully studied in the same school; but we find a gradual disappearance of the more simple style of Raphael, and long before the middle of the century, the two schools may almost be said to have merged in the overwhelming despotism of the principles of Michael Angelo. Even the names now mentioned, though at first following the Roman in their later works, are scarcely to be distinguished from the disciples of the Florentine school. Of those who were truly disciples of the latter, and who derived their science immediately from the founder, was Daniel de Volterra, who survived till 1566. The designs of this latter have frequently been assigned to his master; and in the opinion of Poussin, his Descent from the Cross, in fresco, in the church of Trinita del Monte at Rome, is--or rather was, for it perished under French experiment,--one of the three best pictures in the world. Andrea del Sarto was more an independent master, who held between the two styles, and added better coloring than either. Mazzuoli, better known as Parmegiano, though by birth and early study belonging to the school of Corregio, his better taste was formed at Rome; his style of design is noble, coloring forcible, and general effect sweet and gracious. He died in 1540, ten years after the preceding. But of all the followers of Michael Angelo, Tibaldi approached nearest to the sublimity, without the extravagance, of his model. It soon becomes difficult, indeed impossible, to follow decidedly the division of the ancient schools. In the progress of the century, their principles become united in the works of the minor painters, who are henceforth to be distinguished by the place of their birth, rather than by their style. The design of Michael Angelo prevailed; but to this were added, in proportion to the abilities of the artist, the various discoveries of the other masters. The art however, was in rapid retrogression. A style which suited only the most transcendent genius, which only under such inspiration could be at all pleasing, and from whose sublimity one step led into the turgid and the false, became a most dangerous instrument of ill in the hands of mere imitators. The ingrafting, also, upon its severe simplicity, the more luxurious modes of Venice and Lombardy, tended still more effectually to extinguish character and truth of distinctive representation.