Michelangiolo di Campidoglio of Rome, was greatly distinguished for his masterly grouping of fruits. Though almost fallen into oblivion from the lapse of years, his pictures are still to be met with in Rome, and in other places. The noble family of Fossombroni in Arezzo, possess one of the finest specimens of him that I have ever seen. More generally known is Pietro Paolo Bonzi, called by Baglione, Il Gobbo di Cortona, which was his native place; by others, Il Gobbo de' Caracci, from his having been employed in their school; and by the vulgar, Il Gobbo da' Frutti, from the natural manner of his painting fruit. He did not pass the bounds of mediocrity in historical design, as we may see from his S. Thomas, in the church of the Rotonda, nor in landscapes; but he was unrivalled in painting fruits, and designing festoons, as in the ceiling of the Palazzo Mattei; and in his elegant grouping of fruit in dishes and baskets, as I have seen in Cortona, in the house of the noble family of Velluti, in the Olivieri gallery in Pesaro, and elsewhere. The Marchesi Venuti, in Cortona, have a portrait of him painted, it is believed, by one of the Caracci, or some one of their school, and it is well known, that the drawing of caricatures was a favourite amusement of that academy. At this brilliant epoch, the art of perspective too was carried to a high degree of perfection in deceiving the eye of the spectator. From the beginning of the seventeenth century, it had made great advances by the aid of P. Zaccolini, a Theatine monk of Cesena, in whose praise it is sufficient to observe, that Domenichino and Poussin were instructed by him in this art. S. Silvestro, in Montecavallo, possesses the finest specimen of this power of illusion, in a picture of feigned columns, and cornices and other architectural decorations. His original drawings remain in the Barberini library. Gianfrancesco Niceron de' P. P. Minimi added to this science by his work entitled _Thaumaturgus opticus_, 1643; and in a gallery of his convent at Trinità de' Monti, he painted some landscapes, which, on being viewed in a different aspect, are converted into figures. But the most practised artist in the academy of Rome, was Viviano Codagora, who drew from the ruins of ancient Rome, and also painted compositions of his own invention in perspective. He engaged Cerquozzi and Miel, and others in Rome, to insert the figures for him, but he was most partial to Gargiuoli of Naples, as we shall mention in our account of that school. Viviano may he called the Vitruvius of this class of painters. He was correct in his linear perspective, and an accurate observer of the style of the ancients. He gave his representations of marble the peculiar tint it acquires by the lapse of years, and his general tone of colour was vigorous. What subtracts the most from his excellence is a certain hardness, and too great a quantity of black, by which his pictures are easily distinguished from others in