The amount of his labours is inconceivable, considering the constant sufferings which he is represented to have undergone, from an almost total destruction of digestion, and habitual sleeplessness, consequent upon having been poisoned at thirty-two years of age. The large pictures we have mentioned are but few of those which he produced, yet no artist was more painstaking. Bellori assures us that he always prepared two cartoons and two coloured sketches, drawing exclusively from the life, and made many studies of drapery, separately perfecting his chiaroscuros from figures repeatedly modelled by his own hands, ere he transferred them to his paper. Such conscientious diligence could scarcely have been looked for in an artist whose works owe little to their outline, and may appear unnecessary to those who imitate his fusion only as a trick to mask defective design. This peculiar quality of his colouring was likewise matter of unwearied application, and he endeavoured to facilitate its results by an artificial scale, corresponding to notes in music, as a test for the gradation of his "tuneful" tints. The merits of Baroccio consist in much variety and novelty of conception, in skilful management of his lights, and in the dexterous blending of strongly contrasted tints into a harmonious whole. The Correggesque tone of his pictures admirably conformed to the soft and gentle turn of his character; but whilst his design is more exact, and his foreshortenings are more true, he wants the breadth of Correggio; though his lights are more silvery and superficially lucent, his chiaroscuro neither attains to the force nor the depth of his prototype. The peculiar beauty at which he constantly aimed degenerates into a deformity; the almost cloying sweetness of his faces produces in the spectator a surfeit, inducing a desire for simpler fare. His figures are often deficient in self-possession, his colouring in verity, his compositions in solidity and repose. In a word, Baroccio shared the usual fate of eclectic painters, who, distrusting their own resources, seek to make up a manner from the combined excellences of their predecessors. Striving to engraft the grace of the Parmese upon the design of the Roman school, he fell into a flimsy mannerism, which, in straining after meretricious charms, departs from dignity and devotional feeling.