Thus far of historical painters. We may now recur to landscape and other inferior branches of the art, whose brightest era may be said to have been in the reign of Urban VIII. Landscape, indeed, never flourished so greatly as at that period. A little time before this pontificate, died in Rome, Adam Elzheimer, or Adam of Frankfort, or Tedesco, who had already, under the pontificate of Paul V., established a school (in which David Teniers was instructed); an artist of an admirable fancy, who in an evening committed to the canvass, with singular fidelity, the scenery which he had visited in the early part of the day, and he so refined his style in Rome, that his pictures, which generally represented night scenes, were there held in the greatest request. Only a short time too had elapsed since the death of Giovanni Batista Viola in Rome, one of the first artists who, profiting from the instructions of Annibal Caracci, reformed the old, dry style of the Flemish, and introduced a richer mode of touching landscape. Vincenzio Armanno had also promoted this branch of art, adding to his landscapes a similitude to nature, which without much selection of ground, or trees, or accompaniments, charms us by its truth, and a certain stilness of colour, pleasingly chequered with lights and shades. He is highly to be commended too in his figures, and is copious in his invention. But the three celebrated landscape painters, whose works are so much sought after in the collections of princes, appeared under Urban; Salvator Rosa, a Neapolitan, and a poet of talent; Claude Gellée, of Lorraine; and Gaspar Dughet, also called Poussin, the relative of Niccolas, as I have already mentioned. That kind of fashion, which often aspires to give a tone to the fine arts, alternately exalted one or other of these three, and thus also obliged the painters in Rome to copy in succession, and to follow their various styles.