In the _Antichità Picene_, tom. xxi. p. 148, Ercole Ramazzani di Roccacontrada is recorded as a scholar of Pietro Perugino, and for some time of Raffaello. A picture of the circumcision, by him, is there mentioned to be at Castel Planio, with his name and the date of 1588; and in speaking of the artist it is added, that he possessed a beautiful style of colour, a charming invention, and a manner approaching to Barocci. I have never seen the above mentioned picture, nor the others which he left in his native city, mentioned in the _Memorie_ of Abbondanziere: but only one by a Ramazzani di Roccacontrada, painted in the church of S. Francesco, in Matelica, in 1573. Although I cannot affirm to a certainty that this painter called himself Ercole, I still suspect him to be the same. It represents the conception of the Virgin, in which the idea of the subject is taken from Vasari, where Adam, and others of the Old Testament, are seen bound to the tree of knowledge of good and evil, as the heirs of sin, while the Virgin triumphs over them in her exemption from the penalty of the first parents. Ramazzani has adopted this design, which he had probably seen, but he has executed his picture on a much larger scale, with better colouring, and much more expression in the countenances. To conclude, we do not see a trace of the manner of Perugino, and the period at which he lived seems too late for him to have received instructions from that artist; and it is most probable that he was taught by some of his latter scholars, in whom, if I mistake not, that more fascinating than correct style of colouring had its origin, before it was adopted by Barocci.