To this object there is no one whom I know who has hitherto dedicated his pen, although it seems to be recommended no less by the passion indulged by princes for the fine arts, than by the general diffusion of a knowledge of them among all ranks. The habit of travelling, rendered more familiar to private persons by the example of many great sovereigns, the traffic in pictures, now become a branch of commerce important to Italy, and the philosophic genius of this age, which shuns prolixity in every study, and requires systematic arrangement, are additional incentives to the task. It is true that very pleasing and instructive biographical sketches of the most celebrated painters have been published by M. d'Argenville, in France; and various epitomes have since appeared, in which the style of painting alone is discussed.[4] But without taking into account the corruptions of the names of our countrymen in which their authors have indulged, or their omission of celebrated Italians, while they record less eminent artists of other countries, no work of this sort, and still less any dictionary, can afford us a systematic history of painting: none of these exhibit those pictures, if we may be allowed the expression, in which we may, at a glance, trace the progress and series of events; none of them exhibit the principal masters of the art in a sufficiently conspicuous point of view, while inferior artists are reduced to their proper size and station: far less can we discover in them those epochs and revolutions of the art, which the judicious reader most anxiously desires to know, as the source from which he may trace the causes that have contributed to its revival or its decline; or from which he may be enabled to recollect the series, and the arrangement of the facts narrated. The history of painting has a strong analogy to literary, to civil, and to sacred history; it too requires, from time to time, the aid of certain beacons, some particular distinction in regard to places, times, or events, that may serve to divide it into epochs, and mark its successive stages. Deprive it of these, and it degenerates, like other history, into a chaos of names more calculated to load the memory than to inform the understanding.