amongst a few good, many very indifferent pictures. Before I quit the followers of the school of Parma, I shall return to the Cav. Gio. Batista Draghi, to whom I alluded in the third book. He was a scholar of Domenico Piola, from whom he acquired his despatch; and was the inventor of a new style, which I know not where he formed, but which he practised very much in Parma, and more in Piacenza, where he long lived and where he died. We may trace in it the schools of Bologna and Parma; but in the character of the heads and in the disposition of the colours there is a novelty which distinguishes and characterizes him. Though he painted with extraordinary celerity, yet we cannot accuse him of negligence. To a vivacity and fancy that delight us, he added an attention to his contours and colouring, and a powerful relief, particularly in his oil pictures. There are many pictures by him in Piacenza, and amongst them the Death of St. James in the church of the Franciscans, in the Duomo his St. Agnes, in S. Lorenzo his picture of the titular saint, and the great picture of the Religious Orders receiving their regulations from S. Augustin; a subject painted already in the neighbouring town of Cremona by Massarotti, and well executed, but inferior to Draghi. The Sig. Proposto Carasi particularly praises the picture he painted at Busseto, in the palace Pallavicino. In Genoa he painted, I believe, only some pictures for private collections. Orlandi, who does not even notice this excellent painter, places among the first artists of Europe Gioseffo Palmieri, who, together with the preceding artist, flourished in the early part of the eighteenth century. This praise seems exaggerated, and he probably refers only to the merit which Palmieri exhibited in his pictures of animals, which he was employed to paint even for the court of Portugal. Still in the human figure he is a painter of spirit, and of a magic and beautiful style of colour; very harmonious and pleasing in those pictures where the shades do not predominate. He is, however, reprehended for his incorrect drawing, although he studied under a Florentine painter, who seems to have initiated him well; for in the Resurrection at the church of St. Dominic, and in other pictures more carefully painted, judges of the art find little to reprove.