Whatever splendor of ornament may have been conferred upon the theatre by the Aldrovandini family, so greatly devoted to it; that of the Galli, in the present age, sprung from Gio. Maria, pupil to Albani, surnamed, from his country, Bibiena, has acquired still greater celebrity. By the same surname were distinguished Ferdinando and Francesco, his sons, with their posterity; nor has any pictoric family, either in this or any other age, advanced higher claims to public notice. There was hardly any court that invited not some of the Bibieni into its service; nor was any sphere more eligible for that family than the great courts, whose sovereign dignity was equalled by the elevation of their ideas, which only princely power could carry into execution. The festivals which they directed on the occasion of victories, of nuptials, or of royal entrances, were the most sumptuous that Europe ever witnessed. The genius of Ferdinando, formed for architecture, and for this reason wholly directed to it by Cignani, attained such excellence, that he was enabled to teach it, in a volume which he printed at Parma. He afterwards corrected some parts of it, in two little volumes published at Bologna; the one upon civil architecture, the other on the theory of perspective. Indeed, his genius and works gave new form and character to the theatres. He was the real inventor of those magnificent scenes which we now witness, and of that rapid mechanic motion with which they are seen to move and change. He spent great part of his life in the Duke of Parma's service; a good deal at Milan, and at Vienna, in the court of Charles VI.; always more esteemed as an architect than as a painter. But here, too, he shone, not only in colouring scenes, and similar productions for public festivals; but in perspectives for palaces and temples, more particularly for the state of Parma. Francesco, less learned, but an equally prompt and elevated designer, pursued the same line, and extended it in different cities, being invited to Genoa, Naples, Mantua, Verona, and Rome, at which last he remained three years. He entered the service of the Emperors Leopold and Joseph, who changed his resolution of proceeding to England, and subsequently to Spain, where Philip V. had already declared him his architect. In different collections the perspective pieces of the two brothers appear; and they are occasionally enlivened with figures by the hand of Francesco, who acquired his knowledge from Pasinelli and Cignani, instances of which I have seen in different collections at Bologna.