History informs us that shields for war, or the tournament, and also various equestrian accoutrements, as the saddles and trappings of horses, were ornamented with painting, a custom which was retained till the time of Francia, as Vasari mentions in his life; hence, armourers and saddlers became associated with painters. Among them in like manner might be included those who prepared walls for painting in fresco, and who covered them with a reddish ground, which not unfrequently is still discovered in the flaws. On this colour the figures were designed, and such walls were the cartoons of the old masters. The stucco workers also assisted them in those relieved ornaments we see in fresco paintings. I believe they used moulds in those works, which seem nothing else than globules, flowerets, and little stars, formed with a stamp, such as we see on gilt plaister, on leather, on board, and on playing-cards. On whatever substance they painted, some gold was usually added; with it they ornamented the ground of their pictures, the glories of their saints, their garments, and fringes. Although painters themselves were skilled in such labours, it appears that they sought the assistance of gilders, and therefore gilders were classed with painters, and like them inscribed works with their names. This was the practice of Cini and Saracini, just before recorded, and particularly of a native of Ferrara, who, in the pictures of the Vivarini, at Venice, subscribes his name before theirs. (_See Zanetti, Pittura Ven._ p. 15.) And in the cathedral of Ceneda, below an Incoronation of the Virgin, in which the artist did not care to exhibit himself to posterity, the engraver, already noticed, left the following inscription, which Signor Lorenzo Giustiniani, a Venetian patrician of great taste and cultivation of mind, has very politely communicated to me; "1438, A DI 10. FREVER CHRISTOFALO DA FERARA INTAJO."