Giuseppe Bottani of Cremona, educated at Rome under Masucci, afterwards established himself in Mantua, where he acquired the reputation of a good landscape painter in the manner of Poussin, and of a good figurist in that of Maratta. His best pictures are found beyond the confines of the city; in a church at Milan, dedicated to Saints Cosma and Damiano, is to be seen a Santa Paola by his hand, taking farewell of the domestics, a piece by no means inferior to that of Batoni, which is placed at its side. It had been well for his reputation as an artist had he always exerted himself with equal care, for in every composition he might have approved himself an excellent disciple of the school of Rome. His extreme haste, however, rendered him inconsistent with himself, so that in the city where he taught, there can hardly be enumerated one or two specimens among the great number he produced in public, which can at all vie with the Milanese. The reader may have already learned, in the course of this work, that of all faults celerity is one of the most fatal to the reputation of artists; the rock upon which many of the finest geniuses have struck. To few, indeed, has it been given to produce with rapidity and to produce well. The academy of Mantua not only still exists, but has been furnished by the princes of the house of Austria with splendid rooms, with select casts, and other advantages for the improvement of youth, so as to render it one of the finest academies in Italy.[3] There have appeared, under the auspices of Signor Volta, one of its members, compendious notices of the artists of Mantua, down from the year 1777; an earnest of a more extended work that we are in hopes of receiving from his able and accomplished pen. With these notices, as well as others afforded us in conversation with the same enlightened scholar, we have been glad to enrich the present chapter. Nor have we failed to keep in view the two Discourses upon the Letters and the Arts of Mantua, recited in the academy, and afterwards made public by the Sig. Abate Bettinelli, in which his character, as a fluent orator, and a diligent historian, in the various notes he has added, appears to equal advantage. Footnote 3: Upon the establishment of the Italian republic, according to what I have recently heard from the learned P. Pompilio Pozzetti Scolopio, public librarian at Modena, the academies were reduced to two; the one in Bologna, the other in Milan; and in the rest of the cities they continue to exist as schools of the fine arts. To both of these the government is extremely favourable, as well as to letters, both very interesting objects of public education. And now, by the union of the Venetian states, the academy of Venice is greatly strengthened and increased, established by decree of the government in the year 1724. CHAPTER II. THE MODENESE SCHOOL. EPOCH I. _The Ancients._