This list must not draw to its close without including the name of Scipione Maffei, whose work _Verona Illustrata_, in eight volumes, and often consulted in the construction of these pages, is one of the most trustworthy and complete histories of Verona as far as it goes. Other writings by Maffei confirmed his celebrity, and his fellow-citizens gave expression to his merits, and to the esteem and affection in which they held him, when they set up, during his lifetime, his statue in the Piazza de’ Signori, where it stands to this day close to the Volto Barbaro. Among modern writers, or rather poets, mention must be made of Girolamo Pompei, Ippolito Pindemonte, and Aleardo Aleardi, all poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and all of them belonging to patrician families of Verona. Pompei and Pindemonte were apt translators of the great classic poets of Rome; while Aleardi’s muse was attuned to songs of love and patriotism. The rôle of notable writers and men of letters is by no means exhausted in this list, which has no pretence to do more than give an idea of Verona’s chief literary sons, and to raise her renown in the scholastic world, as well as in that of art and history. * * * * * The school of painting in Verona dates from the reign of Cangrande. There were it is true paintings and frescoes in the town prior to the Scaligers, but they could not come under the classification of a “school,” and are of too remote and uncertain a character to be placed as pertaining to a given date. The patronage bestowed by Cangrande on learning and letters was extended also to painting, and Vasari tells how that “Giotto did some pictures for Messer Cane in his palace; and specially the portrait of that lord.” That Giotto came to Verona at the bidding of this greatest of the Scaligers is well known, as it is also known that he worked there to a considerable extent. Nothing remains, however, of his work in the “Big Dog’s” Palace; and only small and generally “restored” examples are to be found in a few of the churches. The influence of Giotto is felt though markedly in Verona, where the strong impetus given to painting by Cangrande developed steadily under the rule of his descendants. A German critic (Jules von Schlosser) has indeed said that Verona at that period was the centre of pictorial art in Northern Italy; and were all else wanting, the wonderful miniature painting of that time testifies in itself to the truth of such a statement.