Footnote 33: The professors who reflect credit upon it are enumerated by P. Affò in the works cited in this chapter. CHAPTER IV. SCHOOL OF CREMONA. EPOCH I. _The Ancients._ I have never perused the history of Bernardino, and the rest of the pictoric family of the Campi, written some time since by Baldinucci, and more recently by Giambatista Zaist, without thinking that I see in the school which these artists established at Cremona, a sketch of that which was subsequently formed by the Caracci in Bologna. In both these cities a single family projected the formation of a new style of painting, which should partake of all the Italian schools, without committing plagiarism against any; and from each family in its respective city sprung a numerous series of excellent masters, who partly by themselves and partly by means of their disciples, adorned their country with their works, the art by their example, and history itself with their names. Why the Cremonese School did not keep pace with that of Bologna in reputation, nor continue so long as the Caracci's, and why the latter completed in a manner what the other only essayed, was occasioned by a variety of causes which I shall gradually explain in the course of the present chapter. In the outset, agreeably to my usual plan, I mean to investigate the origin and principles of this school, nor shall we need to go farther back than the foundation of the magnificent cathedral in 1107, which as speedily as possible was decorated with all that sculpture and painting could afford. Its specimens of both are such as to gratify the eye of the antiquary, who may wish to trace through what channels, and by what degrees, the arts first began to revive in Italy. The sculpture there does not indeed present us with any works that may not likewise be found in Verona, in Crema, and other places; whereas the paintings remaining in the ceiling of the two lateral naves, may be considered uniques, and deserve the trouble of examining them more nearly, on account of the smallness of the figures and the want of light. They consist of sacred histories; the design is extremely dry, the colours are strong, and their drapery wholly novel, except that some of them still continue to be seen in the modern masks and theatres of Italy. Some specimens of architecture are introduced, presenting only right lines, like what we see in our oldest wood engravings, and explanations are also inserted, indicating the principal figures, in the manner of the more ancient mosaic-workers, when the eye, yet unaccustomed to behold pictoric histories, required some such illustration of the subject. Yet we can gather no traces of the Greek mosaics; the whole is Italian, national, and new. The characters leave us in doubt whether we ought to ascribe them to the age of Giotto, or to that preceding him, but the figures attest that their author was indebted neither to Giotto nor his master for what he knew.