similar decorations, generally novel, and finished in a style almost as fine as miniature. His school gave birth to but few followers. By some Crescenzio di Onofrio is alone considered his true imitator, of whom little remains in Rome; nor indeed is he much known in Florence, although he resided there many years in the service of the ducal house. It is said that he executed many works for the ducal villas; and that he painted for individuals may be conjectured from some beautiful landscapes which the Sig. Cancelliere Scrilli possesses, together with the portrait of Sig. Angelo, his ancestor, on which the artist has inscribed his name and the year 1712, the date of his work. After him we may record Gio. Domenico Ferracuti, of Macerata, in which city, and in others of Piceno, are to be found many landscapes painted by him, chiefly snow pieces, in which kind of landscape he was singularly distinguished. Claude Lorraine is generally esteemed the prince of landscape painters, and his compositions are indeed, of all others, the richest and the most studied. A short time suffices to run through a landscape of Poussin or Rosa from one end to the other, when compared with Claude, though on a much smaller surface. His landscapes present to the spectator an endless variety; so many views of land and water, so many interesting objects, that like an astonished traveller, the eye is obliged to pause to measure the extent of the prospect, and his distances of mountains or of sea are so illusive, that the spectator feels, as it were, fatigued by gazing. The edifices and temples, which so finely round off his compositions, the lakes peopled with aquatic birds, the foliage diversified in conformity to the different kinds of trees,[82] all is nature in him; every object arrests the attention of an amateur, every thing furnishes instruction to a professor; particularly when he painted with care, as in the pictures of the Altieri, Colonna, and other palaces of Rome. There is not an effect of light, or a reflection in the water, or in the sky itself, which he has not imitated; and the various changes of the day are no where better represented than in Claude. In a word, he is truly the painter, who in depicting the three regions of air, earth, and water, has embraced the whole universe. His atmosphere almost always bears the impress of the sky of Rome, whose horizon is, from its situation, rosy, dewy, and warm. He did not possess any peculiar merit in his figures, which are insipid, and generally too much attenuated; hence he was accustomed to observe to the purchasers of his pictures, that he sold them the landscape, and presented them with the figures gratis. The figures indeed were generally added by another hand, frequently by Lauri. A painter of the name of Angiolo, who died young, deserves to be mentioned as the scholar of Claude, as well as Vandervert. Claude also contributed to the instruction of Gaspar Poussin.