Cerva took up his abode at Milan, and if he painted every picture like that which adorns San Lorenzo, representing the Apparition of Jesus Christ to S. Thomas and the other Apostles, he is entitled to rank with the first of his school, such is the choice and spirited character of the heads, such the warmth and distribution of his colouring, and so truly noble and harmonious is its effect as a whole. He must have been deeply versed in the art, though we possess no more of his public works, as he became the master of Gio. Paolo Lomazzo of Milan, who acquired from him the maxims he afterwards published in his Treatise upon Painting in 1584, and which he condensed in his Idea of the Temple of Painting, printed in 1590, to say nothing of his verses, for the most part connected with the same profession. In his account of this writer Orlandi inserted several erroneous epochs of his life, subsequently cleared up by Bianconi, who fixes that of his loss of sight about 1571, in the thirty-third year of his age. Until this misfortune he had continued to cultivate all the knowledge he could derive from those times, which indeed in certain branches are in some measure undervalued. He took a tour through Italy, attaching himself to polite letters and to the sciences, for which he indulged such an enthusiasm, in his ill placed ambition to appear a philosopher, astrologer, and mathematician, that he treated matters even the most obvious in an abstruse and often false manner, as mistaken as the principles of the current astrology itself. This defect is very perceptible in his larger work, though being dispersed scantily here and there, it is the more easily excused. But it is more serious in his compendium, or Idea of the Temple of Painting, where it is presented to us in a point of view truly repugnant to common sense. Whilst engaged in teaching an art which consists in designing and colouring well, he flies from planet to planet; to each of the seven painters, whom he calls principals, he assigns one of these celestial bodies, and afterwards one of the metals to correspond. Extravagant as this idea is, he gave scope to still more strange fancies; so that with this method, combined with a most fatiguing prolixity, and the want of an exact index, his treatises have been little read. It would be well worth while to re-model this work, and to separate the fruit from the husk, as it abounds not only with much pleasing historical information, but with the best theories of art heard from the lips of those who knew both Leonardo and Gaudenzio, as well as with excellent observations upon the practice of the best masters, and much critical knowledge relating to the mythology, history, and customs of the ancients. His rules of perspective are particularly valuable. They were compiled from the MSS. of Foppa, of Zenale, of Mantegna, and of Vinci, (Tratt. p. 264); in addition to which he has preserved some fragments of Bramantino, who was extremely ingenious in