Let us briefly examine this matter. It is said that he there attempted to depreciate the works of Michelangiolo, and that after exhibiting his own productions at the Traspontina, which met with ridicule from the Roman professors, in order to escape from the hisses they excited on all sides, he was compelled to return to his native place. This story, added to others of a like nature, irritated the Lombard artists. Hence Scanelli in his Microcosm, Lamo in his Discourse on Painting, and Campi in his History, renewed the complaints of the other schools against Vasari. These are recorded by Zaist (p. 72) with the addition of his own refutation of this account. The refutation rests upon the epochs which Vasari himself points out, and which of themselves, say his opponents, afford a decided negative to the story of Boccaccino's journey to Rome in time to have cast reflections upon the paintings of Michelangiolo. It is the custom of less accurate historians, when they give the substance of a fact, to add to it circumstances of time, of place, or of manner, that had really no existence. Ancient history is full of such examples, and the severest criticism does not presume to discredit facts on the strength of some interpolated circumstance, provided there be others sufficiently strong to sanction them. In this instance, the historian, and a great friend of Michelangiolo, narrates an affair relating to that friend, and which is supposed to have taken place at Rome, only a short period before the author wrote. We can hardly then believe it to have been a mere idle report without any foundation in truth. I would reject indeed some of its accessaries, and in particular condemn those unwarranted reflections in which Vasari indulges at the expense of one of the most distinguished artists who at that time flourished in Lombardy. Next to the four historical paintings just mentioned, follow those conducted by Romanino di Brescia and by Pordenone, two master spirits of their age, who left examples of the Venetian taste at the cathedral, which were not neglected by the Cremonese, as will be seen. We ought in justice to add, that their city has always shewn a laudable wish to preserve these ancient productions from the effects of age, as far as in her power. When towards the close of the sixteenth century they began to exhibit marks of decay, they were instantly ordered to be examined and restored by a painter and architect of some reputation, called Il Sabbioneta, his real name being Martire Pesenti. The same degree of care and attention has been shewn them in the present day by the Cav. Borroni.