By aid of these, and other materials I have to bring forward, I prepare to treat of the Milanese School from as early a date as 1335, when Giotto was employed in ornamenting various places in the city, which, down to the time of Vasari, continued to be esteemed as most beautiful specimens of the art. Not long subsequent to Giotto, an artist named Stefano Fiorentino was invited thither by Matteo Visconti, and is celebrated as one of the most accomplished pupils of the former. But he was compelled by indisposition to abandon the work he had undertaken in that city; nor do we know that at that period he had any successor in the Giotto manner. About the year 1370, Gio. da Milano, pupil to Taddeo Gaddi, arrived there, so able an artist that his master, at his death, entrusted to him the care of his son Angiolo, and another son, whom he was to instruct in a knowledge of the art. It is therefore evident that the Florentine early exercised an influence over the Milanese School. We are informed at the same time of two native artists, who, according to Lomazzo, flourished at the period of Petrarch and of Giotto. These are Laodicia di Pavia, called by Guarienti, _pittrice_, and Andrino di Edesia, also said to belong to Pavia, although both his name and that of Laodicia lead us to conjecture that they must have been of Greek origin. To Edesia and his school have been attributed some frescos which yet remain at S. Martino and other places in Pavia.[41] I cannot speak positively of the authors; their taste is tolerably good, and the colouring partakes of that of the Florentines of the age. Michel de Roncho, a Milanese, is another artist discovered by Count Tassi, at the same time that he gives some account of the two Nova who flourished at Bergamo. Michele is said to have assisted in their labours in the cathedral of that city, from the year 1376 to 1377, and remnants of these paintings survive, which shew that they approached nearer the composition of Giotto than the artists of Pavia. There are some pictures in Domodossola that also bring us acquainted with an able artist of Nova. They are preserved in Castello Sylva and elsewhere, and bear the following memorandum--_Ego Petrus filius Petri Pictoris de Novariâ hoc opus pinxi_, 1370. Without, however, going farther than Milan, we there find in the Sacristy of the Conventuali, as well as in different cloisters, paintings produced in the fourteenth century, without any indication of their authors, and most frequently resembling the Florentine manner, though occasionally displaying a new and original style, not common to any other school of Italy. Footnote 41: See Notizie delle Pitture, Sculture, ed Architetture d'Italia, by Sig. Bertoli, p. 41, &c.