Andrea painted a great deal; and on this account is well known beyond the limits of his own country. Perhaps his best performance in the hands of strangers is a picture translated to a palace in Genoa from the church of the Domenicans of Sarzana, who possess several others, very beautiful. It is composed in the manner of F. Bartolommeo; and besides the Saints distributed around the Virgin, or on the steps, four of whom are standing and two on their knees, there are two large figures in the foreground that seem to start from the lower part of the picture, and are seen as high as the knee. I am aware that this disposition of the figures displeases the critics; yet it gives variety in the position of so many figures, and introduces a great distance between the nearest and most remote, by which the space seems augmented, and every figure produces effect. The best collections are not deficient in his Holy Families. The Marquis Rinuccini, at Florence, possesses two; and some of the illustrious Romans have even a greater number; but all different, except that the features of the Virgin, which Andrea usually copied from his wife, have always some resemblance. Many others may be seen in Rome and in Florence, and not a few in Lombardy, besides those noticed in the catalogues of foreign nations. So much genius merited success: and yet if one was to write a book on the misfortunes of painters, as has already been done on those of authors, nothing would awaken more compassion than the lot of Andrea. The poverty of Correggio is exaggerated, or perhaps untrue; the misery of Domenichino had a termination; the Caracci were ill rewarded, but lived in easy circumstances. Andrea, from his marriage with Lucrezia del Fede until his death, was almost always pressed with griefs. In his first edition, Vasari says, that he was despised by his friends, and abandoned by his employers, from the time of his marriage with this woman; that, the slave of her will, he left his father and mother to starve; that through her arrogance and violence none of the scholars of Andrea could continue long with him; and this must have happened to Vasari himself. In the second edition he omitted this censure, either because he repented of it, or was appeased; but did not, however, conceal that she was a perpetual source of misfortune to her husband. He there repeated that Andrea was invited to the French court by Francis I. where, caressed and rewarded, he might have excited the envy of every artist; but influenced by the womanish complaints of Lucrezia, he returned to Florence; and remained in his own country, in violation of his faith solemnly pledged to that monarch. He afterwards repented and was anxious to regain his former situation; but his efforts were ineffectual. He dragged out a miserable existence, amid jealousy and domestic wretchedness, until, infected with the plague, and abandoned by his wife and every other individual, he died, in 1530, in the