Such masterpieces as these, with others that are to be seen at Bergamo, in churches and private collections, place him almost on a level with the first luminaries of the art. If Vasari did not fairly appreciate his merits, it arose only from his having viewed several of his less studied and less noble pieces. And it is true that he has not always exhibited the same degree of excellence, or force of design. The period in which he chiefly flourished may be computed from the year 1513, when he was selected, among many professors of reputation, to adorn the altar for the church of the Dominicans at Bergamo; and, perhaps, the decline of his powers ought to be dated from 1546, an epoch inscribed upon his picture of San Jacopo dell'Orio, in Venice. He was employed also at Ancona, and in particular at the church of S. Dominico, at Recanati, where, interspersed among pieces of superior power, more especially in his smaller pictures, we detect some incorrectness in his extremities, and stiffness of composition, resembling that of Gian Bellini; whether, as it is conjectured by Vasari, they were among the earliest, or more probably among some of his latest efforts. For it is well known, that when far advanced in years, he was accustomed to retire to Loreto, a little way from Recanati, and that engaged in continual supplication to the Virgin, in order that she might guide him into a better method, he there closed the period of his days in tranquillity. Jacopo Palma, commonly called _Palma Vecchio_, to distinguish him from his great-nephew Jacopo, was invariably considered the companion and rival of Lotto, until such time as Combe first confused the historical dates relating to him. By Ridolfi we are told that Palma employed himself in completing a picture left imperfect by Titian, at the period of his death in 1576. Upon this, and similar authorities, Combe takes occasion to postpone the birth of Palma, until 1540; adding to which the forty-eight years assigned him by Vasari, the time of his decease is placed in 1588. In such arrangement the critic seems neither to have paid attention to the style of Jacopo, still retaining some traces of the antique, nor to the authority of Ridolfi, who makes him the master of Bonifazio, any more than to Vasari's testimony, in the work published in 1568, declaring him to have died several years before that period in Venice. He does not even consider, what he might more easily have ascertained, that there was another Jacopo Palma, great-nephew of the elder, who, according to the authority of Boschini (p. 110), was a pupil of Titian's as long as the latter survived; and that Ridolfi, on this occasion, entitled him _Palma_, without the addition of _younger_, on account of its being so extremely unlikely that any would confound him with the elder Palma. Such, notwithstanding, was the case, and is, in fact, only a slight sample of the inaccuracies of the whole work. The