Among the foreign pupils of Francia, the Bolognese enumerated Lorenzo Costa, and, indeed, he thus ranks himself, by inscribing under the portrait of Gio. Bentivoglio, _L. Costa Franciae discipulus_. True it is, that such inscriptions, as I have frequently found, might come from another hand; or that, granting he wrote it, he may have done so more out of regard to such a man, than for the sake of acquainting the world, as Malvasia contends, that he had been his sole master. Vasari is of a different opinion, introducing him to us at Bologna as an established artist, already employed in several considerable cities, and bestowing the highest eulogium on his earliest production, the S. Sebastiano at the church of S. Petronio, declaring it the best specimen in water-colours that had, till then, been seen in the city. Add to this, that Francia exhibited his first altar-piece in the Bentivogli chapel in 1490, a few years after he had devoted himself to the art; and there Costa placed the two lateral pictures, tolerably excellent in point of composition, and filled with those very spirited portraits of his in 1488. Now had he boasted only Francia for his master, of what rapid improvement must we suppose him to have been capable! Besides, would not his style almost invariably resemble that of Francia, at least in the works he produced at Bologna? Yet the contrary is the case; and from his less free, and sometimes ill drawn figures; from the coarser expression of his countenances, his more hard and dull colouring, and his abundance of architecture, with the taste shewn in his perspective, it is evident he must have studied elsewhere. Still I believe that he received the rudiments of his education in his own country; that then passing into Tuscany, he formed himself, not by _the voice_, but, as Vasari avers, upon the pictures of Lippi and Gozzoli; and that finally seeking Bologna, he painted for the Bentivogli, and resided also with Francia rather in quality of an assistant than a pupil. A farther proof I gather from Malvasia himself; that in the journals of Francesco, in which he read the names of two hundred and twenty pupils, he found no mention of Costa. In the rest, however, I concur; as to his having availed himself of the works of Francia, in imitation of whom a number of Madonnas are seen in the collections at Bologna, much inferior to the paintings of the supposed master; but occasionally not unworthy of being compared with them. Such is an altar-piece, divided into several compartments, removed from Faenza into the Casa Ercolani; a production characterized by Crespi, in his annotations to Baruffaldi, as being executed "with a fervour, a refinement, softness, and a warmth which may be pronounced altogether Raffaellesque." He particularly shone in his countenances of men, as may be seen from those of the apostles at S. Petronio, and from his San Girolamo, which there offers the finest specimen of his art. He was less employed in his own country