Cav. Francesco Vanni, in the opinion of many, is the best painter of this school; and is reckoned one of the restorers of Italian painting in the sixteenth century. The early instruction of his genius is to be assigned with greater probability to his brother than to his stepfather. At sixteen years of age he went to Rome, for the purpose of designing after Raffaello and the best masters. He was for some time under the tuition of Gio. de' Vecchi, whose style he introduced into his native country. There are specimens of him in many churches, and it is related that they were not relished by his fellow citizens; a circumstance which might occasion him uneasiness at the time, but soon after afforded him a lasting source of satisfaction. It induced him to examine the pictures of Lombardy, as his brother had done: and having remained in Parma to design some of them, he afterwards went to Bologna, where he was assiduously occupied. Ugurgieri writes that he was at that place in 1667, at which time he was twelve years old: this I believe to be incorrect; for it was unknown to Mancini, who was acquainted with Vanni. Malvasia repeats it on the authority of Ugurgieri; but he can discover nothing further of Vanni, at Bologna, than his being there after he had arrived at manhood, and designing in the academy of Facini and Mirandola, to which he was probably introduced by his countryman Marcucci. He left some works at Bologna, in the style of the Caracci, if he is the painter of a Madonna, which was shewn me as a Vanni, in a cabinet of the Zambeccari collection. His Flight into Egypt, painted for the church of S. Quirico, in Siena, bears also undoubted marks of the Bolognese school.