In the Guide of Padua Rosetti includes, in the list of its painters, Antonio Pellegrini, as being the son of one of its citizens, who had established himself, however, at Venice, where Antonio was born. And the Venetians, indeed, may concede him to that city without much sacrifice of fame. For the surprising success he met with in some of the most civilized kingdoms of Europe, is to be attributed to the decline of the art, and to the lively and mannered style he assumed, which found a welcome reception in all parts. He may be pronounced an artist of some ingenuity, facility, and sprightly conception; but he was by no means well grounded in the art; and he expressed his ideas with so little decision, that the objects which he represents sometimes appear to float in a kind of half-existence between visible and invisible. He was so very superficial a colourist, that even in his own times it was said his productions would not continue to last during a half century. And, in truth, those I have seen at Venice and at Padua are already become extremely pallid; while such as he executed at Paris will, doubtless, be in the same state. Yet in that city he obtained a large sum in the year 1720, for merely painting a frieze in the celebrated hall of the Mississippi, which he executed in about six weeks. His best work is, perhaps, to be found at San Moisè, consisting of the Serpent of Bronze, erected by Moses in the Desert; no other equal to it having issued from his studio. As the preceding one is considered the last of the Paduan artists of any note, we may mention, as the last among those of Bergamo, at least of any merit in composition, Antonio Zifrondi, or Cifrondi, pupil to Franceschini. Indeed he greatly resembled the former in his natural bias for the art, in an imagination adapted for great compositions, in facility and rapidity of hand, to such a degree as to dash off a picture in two hours. He likewise passed into France, though without meeting with success, and then resided in his native place, employing himself for those churches that are adorned with so many of his pictures, few of which are free from errors of over haste and carelessness. Thus he did not scruple at the church of S. Spirito, to place near his picture of a Nunziata, conducted in his best style, three other historical pieces of quite an opposite character. We meet with his name mentioned more than once, in the Lettere Pittoriche, with much commendation. Several other artists, whose names are to be met with in Tassi, and his continuator, are known to have flourished at the same period. Nor ought we, by any means, here to omit that of Vittore Ghislandi, who, though little skilled in works of invention, yet in his portraits, and some of his heads, in the way of capricci, has almost equalled in our own times the excellence of the ancients. He was instructed in the art by Bombelli, and by dint of very assiduous study, particularly in the heads of