Gregorio de' Ferrari of Porto Maurizio received from Sarzana instructions conformable to his principles, but which did not correspond with the genius of the scholar, which was naturally disposed to a style of greater freedom and grandeur. He repaired to Parma to study the works of Coreggio, and there made a most careful copy of the great cupola, which was purchased many years after by Mengs; and he returned home with a very different style to his first. Coreggio was his only prototype, and he imitated him most happily in the air of the countenances, and in many individual figures; but not in the general style of composition, in which he is not so ideal; nor in the colouring, as in his frescos he is somewhat languid. He is in general negligent in his drawing; so that, with the exception of the two pictures at the Theatines of S. Pier d'Arena, this censure attaches to all his works. In his foreshortenings and in his draperies he sometimes falls into affectation. He possesses however considerable attractions: he is ingenious and novel, and displays a vigorous, rich, and correct colouring, particularly in the fleshes. By these qualities his S. Michele, at the church of the Madonna delle Vigne, predominates amongst the pictures of that church: and it may be justly ranked with those Venetian productions in which the spirit and noble colourings atone for the inaccuracy of the drawing. He was much employed in Turin and in Marseilles; and still more so in the principal palaces in his own country, particularly in that of the Balbi. There however the great names of that celebrated collection, both foreign and native, wage against him, as we may say, a continual war.