including Coreggio. For whoever will compare the cupola of S. Giovanni at Parma with that of S. Maria near Sarono, painted by Gaudenzio about the same period, must admit that there are a variety of beauties in the former, we may in vain seek for in the latter. Although we must admit that it abounds with fine, varied, and well expressed figures, yet Gaudenzio will be found in this, as in some other of his works, to retain traces of the old style; such as a degree of harshness; too uniform a disposition of his figures; his draperies, particularly of his angels, some of them drawn in lines like Mantegna's; with figures occasionally relieved in stucco, and then coloured, a practice he observed also in his trappings of horses, as well as in other accessaries in the manner of Montorfano. With the exception of these defects, which he wholly avoided in his more finished pieces, Gaudenzio must be pronounced a very great painter, and one who approached nearest of any among Raffaello's assistants to Perino and to Giulio Romano. He displays also a vast fund of ideas, though of an opposite cast, Giulio having frequently directed his genius to profane and licentious subjects, while the former confined himself to sacred compositions. He appears truly unequalled in his expression of the divine majesty, the mysteries of religion, and all the feelings of piety, of which he himself offered a laudable example, receiving the title of _Eximie pius_ in one of the Novarese assemblies. He was excellent in strong expression; not that he aimed at exhibiting highly wrought muscular powers, but his attitudes were, as Vasari entitles them, wild, that is, equally bold and terrible where his subjects admitted of them. Such is the character of his Christ's Passion, at the Grazie in Milan, where Titian was his competitor; and his Fall of S. Paul, at the Conventual friars in Vercelli, a picture approaching the nearest of any to that of Michelangiolo in the Pauline chapel. In the rest of his pictures he shews great partiality for the most difficult foreshortenings, which he introduces very frequently. If he fails in reaching the peculiar grace and beauty of Raffaello, he at least greatly partakes of that character, as we observe in his S. Cristoforo, at Vercelli, where, in addition to the picture of the titular saint, he painted upon the walls various histories of Jesus Christ, and others of Mary Magdalen. In this great work he appears more perhaps than in any other, in the character of a beautiful painter, presenting us with the most lovely heads, and with angels as lively in their forms as spirited in their attitudes. I have heard it praised as his masterpiece, though Lomazzo and the author of the Guide both agree in asserting that the manner he adopted in the Sepolcro of Varallo surpassed all he had elsewhere produced.