CLAUDIO RIDOLFI, though born in Verona in 1560, may be considered a subject of Urbino. His family was noble, but not rich, so adopting painting as a profession, he studied its principles under Paul Veronese, at Venice. But the temptations to idleness which beset him at home so interfered with success that he resolved to escape from them. On his way to Rome he stayed some time at Urbino with Baroccio, in whose glittering style he lost somewhat of the better manner of his early master. But his journey to the "mother of arts and arms" was interrupted by more powerful fascinations; for he married a noble lady of Urbino, and settled at Corinaldo, some miles above Sinigaglia, attracted by the beauty of its site, and fain to enjoy, in provincial retirement, exemption from the jealousies and struggles which often beset artists in a city life, where tact or fortune are apt to confer a success denied to merit. Though he returned for a time to his native city, and painted many excellent works in it, and in the principal towns of the Venetian state, the charms of Corinaldo and his wife's influence induced him to spend there the greater part of a long life. He died in 1644, aged, according to his namesake Carlo Ridolfi, eighty-four, or to Ticozzi, seventy years. To the glowing tints of the Lombard school he eventually added the merit of more accurate design; but his principal excellences were a chastened composition, and a close attention to the proprieties of costume, as contributing to a proper intelligence of the subject. A vast number of his productions are scattered over Umbria and La Marca, and there issued from his studio not a few pupils of provincial eminence, most of whom tended considerably towards the Baroccesque manner. Of those belonging to Urbino the most conspicuous was BENEDETTO MARINI, who, though scarcely known at home, produced many important works in Lombardy, and excelled in the management of crowded compositions, such as his immense Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, painted at Piacenza in 1625. Patanazzi and Urbinelli belong to a less distinguished category, and though Girolamo Cialderi is ranked with them by Lanzi, he seems referable to a subsequent period. * * * * * Gubbio continued in the sixteenth century to maintain a school which, though acquiring little more than a provincial reputation, was not without merit. BENEDETTO NUCCI was born there about 1520, and, imbibing from Raffaelino del Colle certain inspirations of the golden age, left in his native town many respectable church pictures. He died in 1587, having seen his son Virgilio escape from his studio to place himself under Daniel di Volterra at Rome. Among his pupils, but of ever progressive mediocrity, were FELICE DAMIANO and CESARE DI GIUSEPPE ANDREOLI, the latter an offset of a family whose eminence in the art of majolica will be mentioned in our fifty-fifth chapter. CHAPTER LIV