Panvinio speaks of this Pope's solicitude to gather from all Europe additions to the library founded by Nicolas V., and attest his having first put it upon a satisfactory footing, by appointing qualified persons to superintend it, and by assigning it an adequate endowment. Though the rooms in which he placed books have been devoted to other purposes, ever since Sixtus V. removed the augmented collection to its present site, a most interesting memorial of the Pontiff's family and court remains, and has till lately adorned its original locality. It is a fresco, now transported to the Vatican Picture-gallery, wherein Sixtus sits in a noble hall of imposing architecture, with his librarian Bartolomeo Sacchi, surnamed Platina, kneeling at his feet, and pointing to an inscription, which enumerates in rough Latin verses, those ameliorations for which Rome was indebted to his Holiness. In attendance stand his two favourite cardinal nephews; Pietro, with features expressive of unrefined sensualism, wearing the russet habit of the mendicant fraternity, from whose discipline he emerged to lavish ill-gotten gold with rarely equalled prodigality; whilst in the cold and unimpassioned countenance of Giuliano, we vainly seek for those massive features, and that angry scowl, which the pencil of Raffaele subsequently immortalised. The group is completed by the two younger nephews, Girolamo, Lord of Forlì, gawky and common-place in figure, with the Prefect Giovanni, of blunt and burly aspect. It would be difficult satisfactorily to render so large a group in these pages, but we give an unedited and speaking likeness of the Pontiff from a miniature of the same size prefixed to the MS. of Platina's _Lives of the Popes_, dedicated to him and now in the Vatican Library. Besides the claims of this fresco upon our notice, from representing the important members of the della Rovere family, it would be still more interesting to us, were it, as formerly supposed, from the pencil of Pietro della Francesca, court-painter of Urbino. It is now, however, ascribed, almost beyond question, to a pupil of his, sung by Giovanni Sanzi, as "Melozzo, dear to me, Who to perspective farther limits gave."