During this period Agostino collected materials for his varied learning, and enlarged his design; and as before leaving Bologna he had made great progress in engraving under Domenico Tibaldi, he continued in Venice to practise it under Cort with such success, as to excite his master's jealousy, who drove him, but in vain, from his studio; for Agostino was already esteemed the Marc Antonio of his time. Annibal, devoted to a single aim, both at Parma and Venice continued to paint, availing himself of the works and conversation of illustrious men, with whom at that period the Venetian School abounded. It was then, or shortly subsequent, that he executed his beautiful copies of Coreggio, Titian, and Paul Veronese; in whose taste he also conducted some small pictures. Several specimens of these I saw in possession of the Marchese Durazzo at Genoa, displaying opposite, but very graceful styles. Returning accomplished artists into their native place, they struggled long and nobly with their fortunes. Their first undertakings consisted of the exploits of Jason, in a frieze of the Casa Favi; these, though conducted with the assistance of Lodovico, were vituperated with excessive scorn by the old painters, as deficient both in elegance and correctness. To this censure, the credit of these masters who had flourished at Rome, who were extolled by the poets, adorned with diplomas, and regarded by the declining age as pillars of the art, seemed to give weight. Their disciples echoed their words, and the crowd repeated them; and such murmurs proceeding from a public, gifted with as much volubility in conversation as would suffice for purposes of declamation or controversy elsewhere, wounded the feelings of the Caracci, overwhelmed and depressed them. I was informed by the accomplished Cav. Niccolò Fava, that Lodovico's change of fortune, along with that of his cousins, occurred on an occasion, and at a period little differing from the above; which is supported by a tradition to the same effect. The two cousins had executed the frieze in the same hall where Cesi adorned another, in opposition to it, with histories of Æneas, which we have already mentioned, (p. 74). The work, conducted in the old style, was certainly beautiful, but Lodovico, in the new, painted another chamber with other histories, twelve in number, of Æneas, of which mention is made in the Guide of Bologna, (p. 14); histories in no way inferior to those in the Casa Magnani. Here was the beginning of the Caracci's fortune, and of the fall of the old masters, Bologna at length preparing to do justice to the worth of that divine artist, and to verify in respect to Cesi that sentence of Hesiod, of which, to the best of my ability, I here offer a version from the Greek, as follows: Folle chi al più potente fa contrasto! Che perde la vittoria; e sempre al fine, Oltra lo scorno, di dolor si è guasto! _Opera_ V. 210.