FRA BERNARDO CATELANI was a Capuchin monk of Urbino, whose devotion sought scope in the exercise of Christian art, and who is generally considered a follower of Raffaele, although this is doubted by Grossi. Nor does it much matter, for the only work now identified with his name is an altar-piece of the Pietà with two attendant saints, in the church of his order at Cagli. Still less is known of one CROCCHIA of Urbino, named by Baldinucci as a pupil of Raffaele. His countryman, Centogatti, is said to have exercised the arts of architecture, sculpture, and painting, and to have instructed Duke Francesco Maria I., and also Gian Battista Comandino, in engineering. To him Lomazzo ascribes the invention of _baluardi_, and the erection of walls round his native town; but in both respects he appears mistaken, as we have had occasion to show in speaking of Francesco di Giorgio.[199] [Footnote 199: See p. 214 above. In an old MS. chronicle I find, besides most of the names here enumerated, the following now-forgotten painters of Urbino, at the close of the fifteenth century:--Bartolomeo di Maestro Gentile, Bernardino di Pierantonio, Ricci Manara, Francesco di Mercatello, and in 1528 Ottaviano della Prassede.] * * * * * The patronage extended to Francia by Duke Guidobaldo seems, from Vasari's authority, to have been of a very undiscriminating character, for his commissions to that painter of sweet Madonnas consisted of a Lucrezia, and a set of horse-trappings, whereon was depicted a blazing forest, with various animals escaping from it. Gaye has recovered some facts as to the favour bestowed by this dynasty upon Andrea Mantegna. In 1511, Duchess Elisabetta wrote to interest her brother, the Marquis of Mantua, in favour of his son Francesco, expressing herself as mindful of the regard she had borne his father, on account both of his own merits and his devotion to her family. Andrea's acquaintance with Giovanni Sanzi, already referred to, may have been formed on his journey to Rome in 1488, or on his return thence in 1490; but his fame had ere then reached Umbria, for in 1484 Ludovico Gonzaga, bishop of Mantua, wrote to the Prefect della Rovere, pleading his excuse for declining an order for a Madonna, his time being engrossed in the palace of Mantua. Vasari further tells us that Marco Zoppo, another Lombard painter, took a portrait of Guidobaldo when in the Florentine service. To his reign probably belongs a very grand specimen of Giovanni Bellini in the church of S. Francesco at Pesaro. We have already noticed him as a pupil of Gentile di Fabriano; and his visit to the duchy may have enabled him to confirm his early devotional impressions, by there depicting that favourite theme of the mystic school, the Coronation of the Madonna, surrounded by witnessing saints. The countenances, though without the unearthly inspiration belonging to the Umbrian art, have great beauty softened by reverential sentiment, and a