former, I remarked a specimen in Genoa, in possession of Signor Ambrogio Durazzo, where the daughters of the painter are seen intent upon their feminine occupations, a little boy playing, and a domestic in the act of lighting a candle. One of the second kind may be seen in the _Medicean Museum_, a picture which represents an academy of music. By this method he seemed to confess the poverty of his imagination, though he derived from it a very remarkable advantage. By dint of continually repeating the same things, he brought them to the utmost point of perfection of which they were susceptible; as we may gather from his picture of the Nativity of our Lord, placed at San Giuseppe, in Bassano; the master not only of Jacopo, but in point of force of colours and the chiaroscuro, of every thing that modern painting has to boast. The same is seen in his Burial of Christ, at the Seminario of Padua, a picture of which an engraving was taken by order of Madame Patin, among the portraits of celebrated painters; having met with no other that seemed to breathe such a spirit of pity and holy terror. Finally, in his Sacrifice of Noah, at Santa Maria Maggiore in Venice, in which he collected specimens of all the birds and animals he had drawn elsewhere, he preserved the same character; and by this production so far won the regard of Titian, that he wished to purchase a copy for the ornament of his own studio. Hence it happens, that the works of Bassano, conducted at a certain age and with singular care, are estimated very highly, and purchased at large sums, though not altogether exempt from some errors of perspective, from some awkwardness of posture, and some fault in composition, particularly in point of symmetry. Indeed it was the general belief, that he possessed little practical skill in designing the extremities, thus avoiding, as much as lay in his power, the introduction of feet and hands into his pictures. These accusations, with others before alluded to, might be greatly extenuated by producing such examples of Bassano as would fully prove, that he could, when he pleased, draw much better than he was accustomed to do. He knew how to vary his compositions, as we perceive in his Nativity, at the Ambrosiana in Milan; and he might as easily have varied his other pieces. He was capable also of conceiving with equal novelty and propriety, as we gather from his San Rocco, at Vicenza; and he might thus have shone on other occasions. Moreover, he knew how to draw the extremities, as appears from his picture of S. Peter, at Venice, adorning the church of the Umiltà; and he could give dignity to his countenances, as in his Queen of Sheba, which I have seen in Brescia; and he might have displayed the same dignity in other pieces. But whether he found such a task too irksome, or from whatever other cause, he displayed his powers rarely; content with having arrived at his peculiar method of colouring, of illuminating, and of shading, with a sovereign skill.