[Footnote 5: This excellent man is now no more, and his work has not hitherto appeared. That, however, by the Sig. Co. Canonico de Rinaldis, on the painters of Friuli, we have received. It embraces a much more correct and enlarged view of that noble school, than we before possessed in the scantier notices from the pen of Altan. Still he is not always exact, and he would undoubtedly have written better, had he seen more. At length, however, we are in possession of the work of Padre M. Federici, in two volumes, relating to the artists of the "Marca Trevigiana," accompanied by documents; a work better calculated than the former to satisfy the expectations of a reader of taste. But, as is generally the case, when an author hazards new opinions, we are sometimes compelled to suspend our assent to his conclusions.] VENETIAN SCHOOL. EPOCH I. _The Ancients._ If in the outset of each school of painting I were to pursue the example held up in the _Etruria Pittrice_, of introducing the account of its pictures by that of some work in mosaic, I ought here to mention those of Grado, wrought in the sixth century, distinguished by the name of the Patriarch Elia, those of Torcello, and a few other specimens that appeared at Venice, in the islands, and in Terra Firma, produced at periods subsequent to the increase of the edifices, together with the grandeur of the Venetian state. But admitting that these mosaics, like many at Rome, may really be the production of the Greeks; the title of my work, confined as it is to painting, and to the period of its revival in Italy, leads me to be little solicitous respecting those more ancient monuments of the fine arts, remnants of which are to be found scattered here and there, without any series of a school. I shall still, however, occasionally allude to them, according as I find needful, were it only for the sake of illustration and comparison, as I proceed. But such information ought to be sought for in other works; mine professes only to give the history of painting from the period of its revival.