highly prized in collections; and Stefano Amadei also, who was formed more on the Florentine School of that age than on the School of Bologna. Stefano was also attached to letters, and opened a school, and by frequent meetings and instructive lectures improved the minds of the young artists who frequented it. One of the most assiduous of these was Fabio, brother of the Duke of Cornia, of whom some works are mentioned in the Guida di Roma, and who entitled himself to a higher rank than that of a mere dilettante. Besides the Bolognese, a number of Tuscans who were employed by Paul V. in the two churches of S. Peter and S. M. Maggiore, also contributed to the melioration of the Roman School; and some others who, deprived of that opportunity of distinguishing themselves, are yet memorable for the scholars they left behind them. Of the diocese of Volterra was Cristoforo Roncalli, called Il Cav. delle Pomarance, cursorily noticed by us among the Tuscans. I now place him in this school, because he both painted and taught for a considerable time in Rome; and I assign him to this epoch, not from the generality of his works, but from his best having been executed in it. He was the scholar of Niccolò delle Pomarance, for whom he worked much with little reward; and from his example he learnt to avail himself of the labour of others, and to content himself with mediocrity. Yet there are several pictures by him, in which he appears excellent, except that he too often repeats himself in his backgrounds, his foreshortened heads, and full and rubicund countenances. His style of design is a mixture of the Florentine and Roman. In his frescos he displayed fresh and brilliant colours; in his oil pictures, on the contrary, he adopted more sober tints, harmonized by a general tone of tranquillity and placidness. He frequently decorated these with landscapes gracefully disposed. Among his best labours is reckoned the death of Ananias and Sapphira, which is at the Certosa, and which was copied in mosaic in S. Peter's. Other mosaics also in the same church were executed after his cartoons, and in the Lateranense is his Baptism of Constantine, a grand historical composition. But his most celebrated work is the cupola of Loreto, very rich in figures, but injured by time, except some prophets, which are in a truly grand style. He painted considerably in the treasury of that church; and there are some histories of the Madonna not conducted with equal felicity, particularly in the perspective. He obtained this vast commission through the patronage of the Cardinal Crescenzi, in competition with Caravaggio, who, to gratify his revenge, hired an assassin to wound him in the face; and in rivalship too with Guido Reni, who retaliated in a more laudable manner, by proving his superiority by his works. Roncalli from this time was in great request in the cities of Picenum, which in consequence abound with his pictures. There is to be seen at the Eremitani at S.