To this class belongs M. Paolo, whom Zanetti found recorded in an ancient parchment, bearing the date of 1346. He is the earliest in the national manner, of whom there exists a work with the indisputable name of its author. It is to be seen in the great church of St. Mark, consisting of a tablet, or, as it is otherwise called, _Ancona_, divided into several compartments, representing the figure of a dead Christ, with some of the Apostles, and historic incidents from the holy Evangelist. There is inscribed underneath--_Magister Paulus cum Jacobo, et Johanne filiis fecit hoc opus_; and Signor Zanetti, page 589, observes in regard to it as follows:--_Among the specimens of simple painting, in St. Mark's, the ball centre of the great altar is remarkable for several small tablets of gold and silver, on which are painted several figures in the ancient Greek manner. San Pietro Urseolo had it constructed about the year 980, at Constantinople, and it was removed to this place in the time of the Doge Ordelafo Faliero, in 1102, though it was afterwards renovated by command of the Doge Pietro Ziani, in 1209._ This historian did not discover the inscription which I found upon it in the year 1782. The artist is sufficiently distinguished for the period in which he flourished, although the stiffness in the design, false action, and expression, beyond those of the best followers of Giotto, are perceptible, so much as to remind us of the Greek specimens of art.[13] There can, likewise, be no doubt, that a painter of the name of Lorenzo, was one of these Venetians, whose altarpiece in St. Antony of Castello, to which is attached his name, with the date of 1358, _paid him three hundred gold ducats_, has been commended by Zanetti. Besides, we read inscribed on a picture belonging to the noble house of Ercolani, at Bologna, the words MANU LAURENTII DE VENETIIS, 1368; and there is every appearance of his being the author of the fresco in the church of Mezzaratta, not far from Bologna, representing Daniel in the lions' den; and bearing the signature of _Laurentius, P._ It is a work that bears no resemblance to the style of Giotto, and appears to have been completed about the year 1370. It is equally certain that Niccolo Semitecolo was a Venetian, he having also inscribed his name as we find it written upon a TRINITY, which represents the Virgin, along with some histories of St. Sebastian, still preserved in the chapter library of Padua:--"Nicoleto Semitecolo da Veniexia impense, 1367." The work is an excellent specimen of this school; the naked parts are tolerably well drawn, and the proportions of the figures, though sometimes extravagantly so, are bold and free; and what is more important to our present purpose, it discovers no resemblance to the style of Giotto, being inferior in point of design, though equal to him in regard to the colouring. Two other painters, whose style betrays nothing of Giotto, were discovered by