pencil by hasty and negligent performances. Not having in public many examples of ideal excellence, it has supplied the deficiency by the study of the natural; and in the figure it has rather adopted the healthy, and the robust, and the energetic, than the delicate and the elegant. The study of portraits, in which this school had excellent masters and most lucrative practice, had a great influence on the figures of its first epoch; those of its last, if they have more beauty, have less spirit. There existed a talent for extensive composition, but in middle size rather than in great. In these they had not epic masters, like Paolo and other Venetians; they did not, however, so often violate decorum and costume. This was, perhaps, the result of the attachment to literature entertained by many of the Genoese painters, amongst whom are enumerated a greater number of men of letters, and especially gentlemen, than in any other school. This latter circumstance was, in a great measure, owing to Paggi, who, in a treatise of considerable length, defended the nobility of the art,[64] and obtained a public decree,[65] declaring the art honourable, and worthy of cultivation by men of the noblest birth; an event from which the art derived the greatest dignity. We now return to particulars. Footnote 64: It is inserted in the 7th vol. of the Lettere Pittoriche, p. 148. Footnote 65: The decree is given by the Cavalier Ratti in the notes to Soprani. The names of the noble painters, amateurs of the art, may be found in those two authors.