mosaic, enamel,[97] and the weaving of tapestry, that is not followed there in a laudable manner. Whoever desires to be further informed of the present state of the Roman School, and of the foreign artists resident in Rome, should peruse the four volumes entitled, _Memorie per le belle arti_, published from the year 1785, and continued to the year 1788, a periodical work deserving a place in every library of the fine arts, and which was, I regret to add, prematurely discontinued. [Footnote 85: With regard to drapery, Winckelmann conjectures, (Storia delle Arti del Disegno, tom. i. p. 450,) that the erroneous opinion that the ancients did not drape their figures well, and were surpassed in that department by the moderns, was at that time common among the artists. This opinion still subsists among some sculptors, who disapprove particularly of the ancient custom of moistening the drapery, in order to adapt it the better to the form of the figure. The ancients, they say, ought to be esteemed, not idolized. To carry nature to the highest degree of perfection, was always allowable, but not so to degrade her by mannerism.] [Footnote 86: He was the pupil of Niccolas Poussin, and from him acquired his taste for drawing after the antique. He employed this talent in copying the finest bassirilievi, and the noblest remains of ancient Rome. These were engraved by him, and circulated through Europe. He also copied a great number of ancient pictures from the _Sotterranei_, which passed into private hands unpublished. Pascoli mentions many more of his works in engraving, the pursuit of which branch of the art led him gradually to forsake painting. Of his pictures we find one in the church of Porto, and a very few more of his own designing. He devoted himself to the copying the pictures of the best masters, and carried his imitation even to the counterfeiting the effects of time on the colours; and he copied some pictures of Poussin with such dexterity, that it was with difficulty the painter himself could distinguish them.] [Footnote 87: In the _Risposta alle Riflessioni Critiche di Mons. Argens_.] [Footnote 88: This artist had painted one of the two laterals of the chapel, asserting that there was no artist living capable of painting a companion to it. Benefial painted one very superior, and represented in it an executioner with his eyes fixed on and deriding the picture of Muratori.] [Footnote 89: See _Memorie per le Belle Arti_, tom. ii. p. 135, where Sig. Giangherardo de' Rossi gives an account of this artist, derived principally from information furnished by Sig. Cav. Puccini, who has been occasionally mentioned with approbation in the first volume of this work.]