poets,) I know not how far susceptible of imitation in another tongue: "_È l'arcipittorissimo de' buoni_." Lorenzo Lippi, like his friend Salvator Rosa, divided his hours between poetry and painting. His Malmantile Racquistato,[219] which is a model of Tuscan purity of language,[220] is a work less read perhaps, but more elegant than the satires of Salvator; and is sprinkled with those graceful Florentine idioms that are regarded as the Attic salt of Italy. In looking for a prototype among the artists of his own school, guided by similarity of genius, he made choice of Santi di Tito. A delineator of the passions sufficiently accorded with the genius of the poet, and a painter of the choicest design was highly congenial to so elegant a writer. He, however, added to his style a greater force of colouring; and in drapery he followed the practice of some Lombard masters and of Baroccio, in modelling the folds in paper, a practice of which their works retain some traces. The delicacy of pencil, the clearness, harmony, and to sum up all, the good taste, pervading his pictures, demonstrate that he had a feeling of natural beauty superior to most of his contemporaries. His master admired him, and said, with a liberality not always to be found among history painters, "Lorenzo, thou art more knowing than I." His pictures are not very rare at Florence, although he resided far from it for many years, for he was painter to the court of Inspruck. A Crucifixion, among his best performances, is in the ducal gallery. The noble family of Arrighi possesses a S. Saverio recovering from the claws of a crab, the Crucifix which he had dropped into the sea. Baldinucci and the author of _The Series of the most Illustrious Painters_ have spoken very highly of his Triumph of David, painted for the hall of Angiol Gaddi, who wished him to represent his eldest son as the son of Jesse, and his other sixteen children as the youths and virgins, that with songs and timbrels greet the victor, and hail the deliverance of Israel. In this celebrated piece, the artist was enabled to give full scope to his talent for portrait painting, and to the style approaching to nature, which he loved, without troubling himself about studied and artful embellishments. It was his maxim to write poetry as he spoke, and to paint what he observed. Mario Balassi perfected himself under Passignano, and after the choicest examples of the Roman and other schools. He was an excellent copyist of the old masters, and a painter of invention above mediocrity. Some of his small historical pictures, and a few pieces representing eatables, are to be met with in private houses; and, above all, there are many of his half-length figures finely coloured and relieved. In his old age he changed his manner, and retouched as many of the works of his youth as he could lay his hands on; but in striving to improve, he only injured them.