With this narrative does the author proceed, like a careful culturist, gently sprinkling with refreshing drops his pictoric tree, whose seed he had shortly before planted, in order to trace the whole derivation of early artists from the leading stock of Cimabue. It has elsewhere been observed that this famous tree can boast no root in history; that it sprung out of idle conjectures, put together as an answer to the _Felsina Pittrice_ of Malvasia, in which the Bolognese School is made to appear, as it were, _autoctona_, derived only from itself. Now Baldinucci, in order to give its origin to Florence, would persuade us that Oderigi, a miniaturist, and master of Franco, the first painter at Bologna on the revival of the arts, had actually been a disciple of Cimabue. His argument amounts to this: that Dante, Giotto, and Oderigi, being known to have lived on the most intimate terms together, and all three greatly devoted to the fine arts, must have contracted their friendship in the school of Cimabue; as if such an intimacy might not have sprung up at any other time or place amongst three men who travelled. It is besides difficult to believe that Oderigi, ambitious of the fame of a miniaturist in ornamenting books, should have applied to Cimabue, who in those times was not the best designer of figures, though the most eminent painter in fresco, and of grand figures. A more probable supposition, therefore, is that Oderigi acquired the art from the miniaturists, who then greatly abounded in Italy, and carried it to further perfection by his own design. Neither are the epochs themselves, fixed upon by Baldinucci, in favour of his system. He would have it that Giotto, at ten years of age, being about the year 1286, began to design in the school of Cimabue, when the latter had attained his forty-sixth year; nor could Oderigi have been any younger, whose death happened about 1299, one year before that of Cimabue, his equal in reputation, and in the dignity of the pupil, who already surpassed the master. How difficult then to persuade ourselves that a genius, described by Dante as lofty and full of vaunting, should demean himself by deigning to design at the school of a contemporary, near the seat of a mere child; and subsequently surviving only thirteen years, should acquire the fame of the first miniaturist of his age, besides forming the mind of a pupil superior to himself. It is no less incredible that Oderigi, after having seen Giotto's specimens in miniature, "_should in a short time become famous_." Giotto, in 1298, when twenty-two years of age, was at Rome in the service of the pope; where, observes Baldinucci, he also illuminated a book for the Car. Stefaneschi; a circumstance not mentioned by Vasari, nor supported by any historical document. Yet taking all this for granted, what length of time is afforded for Oderigi to display his powers, on the strength of seeing Giotto's