From a deficiency of _specimens_, like those above recorded, painting long remained in a more rude state than mosaic, and was very far behind sculpture. But we must not imagine, that at the birth of Cimabue, in 1240, the race of artists was entirely extinct, as erroneously asserted by Vasari: this must be deemed an exaggeration, for he himself has recounted several sculptors, architects, and painters then living; and the general scope of his less cautious expressions, against which so many writers have inveighed, and still continue to declaim, favours this opinion. I shall be constrained to advert, in almost every book, to their accusations, and to produce the names of the artists who then lived. I shall commence with those who then flourished in Tuscany. The city of Pisa, at this time, had not only painters, but a school for each of the fine arts[38]. The distinguished Signor Morrona, who has illustrated the Pisan antiquities, deduces its origin immediately from Greece. The Pisans, already very powerful by sea and land, having resolved in 1063 to erect the vast fabric of their cathedral, had drawn thither artists in miniature, and other painters, at the same time with Buschetto the architect, and these men educated pupils for the city. The Greeks at that time were but ill qualified to instruct, for they knew little. Their first pupils in Pisa seem to have been a few anonymous artists, some of whose miniatures and rude paintings are still in existence. A parchment, containing the _exultet_, as usually sung on Sabbato Santo, is in the cathedral, and we may here and there observe, painted on it, figures in miniature, with plants and animals: it is a relique of the early part of the twelfth century, yet a specimen of art not altogether barbarous. There are likewise some other paintings of that century in the same cathedral, containing figures of our Lady, with the holy infant on her right arm: they are rude, but the progress of the same school may be traced from them to the time of Giunta. This artist lately received a fine eulogium, among other illustrious Pisans, from Signor Tempesta, and he was fully entitled to it from the more early historians. His country possesses none of his undoubted pictures, except a crucifixion with his name, which is believed to be among his earliest productions, a print from which may be found in the third volume of _Pisa Illustrata_. He executed better pictures in Assisi, where he was invited to paint by Frat' Elia di Cortona, superior of the Minori, about the year 1230. From thence we are furnished with notices of his education, which is thus described by P. Angeli, the Historian of that cathedral: "Juncta Pisanus ruditer à Græcis instructus, primus ex Italis, artem apprehendit circa An. Sal. 1210." In the church of the Angioli there is a better preserved work of the same master; it is a crucifixion, painted on a wooden cross; on the lateral edges and upper