While the schools of the state thus continued to advance, a knowledge of design became more general in Venice; and in the latter part of the century, its artists, for the most part, had acquired a taste similar to what I have already described as influencing those of other places--a taste rather removed from the antique coarseness, than adorned with the elegance of the moderns. Although the use of canvass had been already adopted in Venice, like that of boards elsewhere, a circumstance for which Vasari accounts, in treating of the Bellini, there was no composition besides water colours, or distemper; excellent, indeed, for the preservation of tints, as we perceive from unfaded specimens in the present day, but unfriendly to the production of union, smoothness, and softness. At length appeared the secret of colouring in oils from Flanders, a discovery conferring a happier era upon the Italian Schools, and in particular upon that of Venice, which availed itself of it above every other, and apparently the very first of all. In the Florentine School I have described the origin of this invention, ascribing it, along with Vasari, to Giovanni Van Eych, and both there and in the Neapolitan, I have also shewn that the first who communicated it to Italy was Antonello da Messina, having been instructed in it by Giovanni himself in Flanders. The historical account of this Messinese, as I have repeatedly before observed, has never been sufficiently elucidated. Vasari and Ridolfi state such facts respecting him as are not easily reconcilable to the period of life in general assigned to him, reaching only to forty-nine years; and I have proved, in collecting memorials, to which they had no access, alluded to in the Neapolitan School, that there were two distinct visits made by Antonello to Venice. The first, it appears to me, must have taken place soon after his return into Italy; at which time he concealed the discovery from every one, except it were Domenico Veneziano, who is known to have availed himself of it for many years, both in Venice and elsewhere. During that period Antonello visited other places, and more especially Milan, whence he returned to Venice for the second time, and as it is said, _received a public salary_, and then he divulged the method of painting in oils to the Venetian professors; a circumstance which, according to the superscriptions attached to his pictures, appears to have taken place about the year 1474. Other signatures are to be met with as late as 1490, insomuch that he must have run a longer career than that which has above been assigned him. And we are here arrived at an era, at once the happiest and most controverted of any. But of the Venetians we shall treat presently, after alluding to the works of this foreign artist apart. Two altarpieces by his hand are recorded, which were painted for the two churches of the Dominante, besides several Madonnas, and other