the public academy to the practice of modelling, will not unjustly confound him with those plagiarists, so notorious in our own day. Moreover, he may be pronounced inimitable to most artists, in those rare gifts, which nature had lavished upon him: enthusiasm, fertility of invention, sensibility, and skill in depicting the passions; to which he added a correct eye, and ability both to design and compose, in the decoration of friezes for the institute, exotic plants and other rarities of nature, as well as to engrave with much elegance, and skill to paint in oil as well as in fresco. A really impartial biographer must pass his opinion on every man, and let his verdict result from an examination of his masterpieces. Such belonging to Gandolfi are his Assumption, in the ceiling at S. M. della Vita, and the Nuptials of Cana, at the refectory of S. Salvatore in Bologna; not to insist on the Martyrdom of S. Pantaleone, at the church of the Girolimini in Naples, with some other works scattered through various parts of Italy. BOOK IV. SCHOOL OF FERRARA. EPOCH I. _The Ancients._ Ferrara, once the capital of a small principality under the dukes of Este, but, since the year 1597, reduced into a legation, dependant upon the see of Rome, lays claim to a series of excellent artists, greatly superior to its power and population. This, however, will appear less extraordinary, if we call to mind the number of its illustrious poets, commencing even before the time of Boiardo and Ariosto, and continued down to our own days; a sure indication of national genius, equally fervid, elegant, and inventive, adapted, more than common, to the cultivation of the agreeable arts. Added to this felicity of disposition was the good taste prevalent in the city, which, in its distribution of public labours, or its approbation of their results, was directed by learned and enlightened men, of whom it could boast in every department. Thus the artists have in general observed appropriate costume, kept their attention on history, and composed in such a manner that a classical eye, particularly in their paintings in the ducal palaces, recognizes the image of that antiquity of which it has previously obtained a knowledge from books. The conveniences of its site, also, have been favourable to the progress of painting at Ferrara; which, situated near Venice, Parma, and Bologna, not far from Florence, and at no very great distance from Rome itself, has afforded facility to its students for selecting from the Italian schools what was most conformable to the peculiar genius of each. Hence the origin of so many beautiful manners as adorn this school; some imitating only one classic master, others composed of various styles; so that Giampietro Zanotti was in doubt whether, after