holy pieces intended for private houses, together with some few productions in fresco. There is no doubt but he also produced many others, both at the instance of natives and of foreigners, relieving himself from the multiplicity of his commissions by the aid of Pino di Messina, the same who is commended in the memoirs of Hackert, as the pupil and companion of Antonello's labours at Venice. It is not mentioned whether he produced any specimens of his art in Sicily, nor am I certain whether he returned thither. In many Venetian collections, however, they are still preserved, and display a very correct taste, united to a most delicate command of the pencil; and among others is a portrait in the possession of the family Martinengo, bearing the inscription _Antonellus Messaneus me fecit, 1474_. In the council hall of the Ten is also to be seen one of his pictures of a Pietà, half-length, subscribed, _Antonius Messinensis_. The features of the countenances, though animated, are not at all select, nor have much of the Italian expression; and his colours in this and other of his productions that I have seen, are less vivid than in some Venetian artists of that age, who carried the perfection of colouring to its highest pitch. There is good authority for believing that, together with Antonello, or very near the same period, there flourished in Venice one of the best Flemish disciples of Giovanni Van Eych; called by Vasari, Ruggieri da Bruggia. There appears, in the Palazzo Nani, adorned by its present owner in the hereditary taste of his noble family, with the most splendid monuments of antiquity, a San Girolamo between two holy virgins, a picture, as is shewn from the following inscription, by his hand,--_Sumus Rugerii manus_. It is drawn with more merit in point of colouring than of design, upon Venetian pine wood, not upon Flemish oak; and for this reason it is considered by Zanetti, as the production of a native artist. But if the Venetians had really possessed a painter of so much merit, towards the year 1500, how is it possible that he should be distinguished only by this solitary specimen of his powers. Even the very imposing formula he made use of in subscribing his name, contrary to the usual practice of those times, without mention either of family or of place, is it not altogether like that of an artist who feels and displays his own celebrity?[24] To me it does not appear at all improbable that Ruggieri, on arriving in Italy,[25] sought to employ his talents upon some subject, in the same way as Ausse,[26] his disciple, Ugo d'Anversa, and other Flemish painters of that period, whose names are commemorated along with his by Vasari, in the twenty-first chapter of his introduction.