That portion of the work which remained unfinished, was, after the death of Pius IV., completed by Vasari and his school, under his successor; and some little was supplied under Gregory XIII., who was elected in 1572. With that year a reign commenced but little auspicious to art, and still less so was the Pontificate of Sixtus V., the successor of Gregory. These Pontiffs erected or ornamented so many public buildings, that we can scarcely move a step in Rome, without meeting with the papal arms of a dragon or a lion. Baglione has accurately described them, and to him we are indebted for the lives of the artists of this and the following period. It is natural for men advanced in years to content themselves with mediocrity in the works which they order, from the apprehension of not living to see them, if they wait for the riper efforts of talent. Hence those artists were the most esteemed, and the most employed, who possessed despatch and facility of execution, particularly by Sixtus, of whose severity towards dilatory artists we shall shortly adduce a memorable instance. This inaccuracy of style was continued to the time of Clement VIII., when a number of works were hastily finished to meet the opening of the holy year 1600. Under these pontiffs the painters of Italy, and even the _oltramontani_, inundated Rome with their works, in the same manner that the poets and philosophers had filled that city with their writings in the time of Domitian and Marcus Aurelius. Every one indulged his own taste; and the style of many was deteriorated through rapidity of execution. Thus the art, particularly in fresco, became the employment of a mechanic, not founded in the just imitation of nature, but in the capricious ideas of the artist.[60] Nor was the colouring better than the design. At no period do we find such an abuse of the simple tints, in none so feeble a chiaroscuro, or less harmony. These are the mannerists, who peopled the churches, convents, and saloons of Rome with their works, but in the collections of the nobility they have not had the same good fortune. This era, nevertheless, is not wholly to be condemned, as it contains several great names, the relics of the preceding illustrious age. We have enumerated the painters who flourished in Rome in the first reigns of this century, and we ought to notice a number of others. They were for the most part foreigners, and ought to be introduced in other schools. I shall here describe those particularly, who were born within the limits of the Roman School, and those who, being established in it, taught and propagated their own peculiar style.