The age of Giotto and Dante gives Art an air of greater certainty. Tradition and monument go hand in hand. Franco of Bologna, with his supposed master Oderigi of Gubbio, are celebrated in the poet's poem of the Purgatory. Franco was called to Rome by Bonifazio VIII. to decorate the books and missals of the Vatican library with miniature; and on his return to Bologna founded a school which numbered among its scholars _Vitale_, _Lorenzo_, _Simone_, and _Jacopo d'Avanzi_, whose works, especially what remains of the two last, make it probable that Vasari is correct when he asserts that Franco excelled in large as well as in miniature painting. Michael Agnolo and the Carracci are said to have been struck with the fire of conception and the tone of colour in the pictures still preserved of Simone and Jacopo d'Avanzi, at the Madonna di Mezzaratta, and to have advised a careful restoration of the decaying parts. Simone, who loved to paint the crucifix, from the number which he executed obtained the surname of "de' Crocefissi;" and Jacopo, smitten with the love of Maria, was marked by the title "dalle Madonne." He excelled, however, in subjects of a martial kind, if the conflict in the Chapel of S. Jacopo del Santo at Padova, and the Capture of Jugurtha, with the Triumph of Marius, in a saloon at Verona, be his performances: works which excited the wonder of Mantegna. As he sometimes subscribed "Jacobus Pauli," it has been surmised that he was of Venetian extraction, and perhaps the son and assistant of that Paolo who painted the Ancona of S. Marc. Of the artists who at that period painted in Mezzaratta, Cristoforo, whether of Ferrara, Modena, or Bologna, for he is claimed by all, seems to have shared the highest repute. He had the commission of the principal altar, where he painted on panel the Madonna with the Infant between her knees, and some figures kneeling before her; it still exists, marked with his name Christofano, 1380. A most copious work of his, divided into ten compartments of saints, rudely designed, languid in colour, but of original style, is preserved among the fragments of the house Malvezzi.