[Footnote 221: Passeri, a great admirer of his tints, pronounces him a master of invention; and, treating of his engravings, says, "such vigour of conception, such novelty, and such variety, were never the gift of any other artist. He is a poet in all his historic pieces, his composition is full of fancy; this, however, is not equally commended by all, who look for the simple action without other accessaries."] [Footnote 222: The Bully.] [Footnote 223: Botti is pronounced a famous fresco painter by Magalotti, in _Lett. Pitt._ tom. v. p. 229. There are various mechanical works of Lorenzo. He painted the whole ceiling of the church of the Domenicans at Fiesole, which was considered by Conca among the respectable productions of his age.] [Footnote 224: The Trumpet.] [Footnote 225: The Swarthy.] [Footnote 226: Lett. Pitt. tom. i. p. 308.] [Footnote 227: The Ab. Conca, tom. ii. p. 53, writes of this artist, that with this and similar works he acquired so much reputation in Madrid, that the name of a principal street in which he lived was borrowed from his; from the time of Philip II. it has been called _Jacome Trezzo_.] [Footnote 228: Tom. viii. p. 156.] FLORENTINE SCHOOL. EPOCH V. _Pietro da Cortona and his followers._ After the middle of the seventeenth century, the Florentine school, and also that of Rome, underwent a remarkable revolution, occasioned by the vast number of the followers of Pietro da Cortona. Sects in painting have the same fate as sects in philosophy: one succeeds another; and the new principles are propagated more or less rapidly, according to the degree of opposition they have to encounter where they happen to be diffused. The manner of Cortona met with considerable opposition in Rome, as we shall find in the proper place. He was invited to Florence by Ferdinand II. about the year 1640, to ornament some of the apartments of the Pitti palace; and this work, in which he spent several years, has appeared to connoisseurs the most beautiful he ever performed. He was directed in this work by Michelangiolo Bonarruoti the younger, a literary man of great judgment; and Cortona appears also to display learning in the execution. In one apartment he painted the four ages of the world, which the poets of all nations have described in imitation of Hesiod; five other chambers were dedicated to five fabulous deities, from whom they were named the chamber of Minerva, of Apollo, of Mars, of Jupiter, and of Mercury. He united the mythology of each with history. Thus, for instance, in the chamber of Apollo, he represents this patron of the fine arts on the ceiling in the act of receiving the young Hercules, who is introduced by Minerva, that he may be instructed; and on the walls he painted Alexander reading the works of Homer, Augustus listening to Virgil, and other similar stories, which are fully described by Passeri in his Life of Cortona. The great work was finished