Carlo, as I before noticed, was not only a good writer, but one of the best biographers of artists we have. Not that he was wholly exempt from every kind of grammatical error, any more than Baldinucci himself, though one of the della Crusca academicians; but he knew how to avoid errors of judgment, into which others fell; such as relating old stories, fit only to amuse children when they first begin to draw eyes and ears; making inquisition into the life and manners of every artist, and wasting time in long preambles, episodes, and moral reflections, quite out of place. On the contrary he is precise, rapid, and eager to afford fresh information for his readers in a small space, with the exception of quoting largely sometimes from the poets. His pictorial maxims are just; his complaints against Vasari always in a moderate tone, and his descriptions of paintings and of grand compositions very exact, and displaying great knowledge, both of mythology and history. He concludes the work with an account of his life, in which he complains of the envy of rivals, and the ignorance of the great, too often combining together to trample upon real merit. His epitaph, as given by Sansovino, a contemporary writer, and afterwards by Zanetti, refers the year of his decease to 1658. Boschini, on the contrary, in his Carta, page 509, speaks of him as one of the living authors in 1660, in which year his book was given to the world. I am inclined to think that those verses in which Ridolfi is commended, were the production of Boschini while the former was still living, and that after his death he neglected to retouch them.