I ought not to omit to mention in this place, that Giotto employed himself at Bologna. There is one of his altar-pieces still preserved at San Antonio with the superscription of MAGISTER IOCTUS DE FLORENTIA. We, moreover, learn from Vasari that Puccio Capanna, a Florentine, and Ottaviano da Faenza, with one Pace da Faenza, all pupils of Giotto, pursued their labours more or less at Bologna. Of these, if I mistake not, there are occasional specimens still to be met with in collections and in churches. Nor are there wanting works of the successors of Taddeo Gaddi, one of the school of Giotto, which, as I have seen great numbers in Florence, I have been able to distinguish with little difficulty among specimens of this other school. Besides this style, another was introduced into Bologna from Florence, that of Orcagna, whose Novissimi of S. Maria Novella were almost copied in a chapel of San Petronio, painted after the year 1400; the same edifice which Vasari on the strength of popular tradition, has asserted, was ornamented by Buffalmacco. From this information, we are brought to conclude that the Florentines exercised an influence over the art, even in Bologna; nor can I commend Malvasia, who, in recounting the progress of his school, gives them no place, nor makes them any acknowledgment. Their models, which at that period were the most excellent in the art, there is reason to suppose, may in those times have afforded assistance to the young Bolognese artists, as those of the school of Caracci, in another age, instructed the youth of Florence. It is time, however, to return to the pictures of Mezzaratta. The authors of those just recorded, were, some of them, contemporary with the disciples of Giotto; others flourished subsequent to them; nor is there any name more ancient than that of Vital da Bologna, called _dalle Madonne_, of whom there are accounts from 1320 till the year 1345. This artist, who painted for that church a picture of the Nativity, and from whose hand one of S. Benedetto with other saints is seen in the Malvezzi palace, had more dryness of design than belonged to the disciples of Giotto at that period; and he employed compositions that differed from that school, so extremely tenacious of Giotto's ideas. If Baldinucci ventured to assert of him that his style, in every particular, agrees with that of his Florentine contemporaries, he wrote on the faith of others; a sufficient reason with him for affirming that he was pupil to Giotto, or to some one of his disciples. I would not venture so far; but rather, to judge from the hand of Vitale, which Baldi, in his Biblioteca Bolognese, entitles "manum elimatissimam," from the dryness of design, and from his almost exclusive custom of painting Madonnas, I argue that he had not departed much from the example set by Franco, more of a miniaturist than a painter, and that his school could not have been that school more elevated, varied, and rich in ideas, formed by Giotto.