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, an eminent historical painter, was born at Modena in 1512, and was the scholar of Antonio Beggarelli, a Modenese sculptor, whose models Correggio is said to have often made use of for his works. Little is known of his progress at Modena, except that, in partnership with his fellow-scholar Alberto Fontana, he painted the pannels of the Butchers hall in that place; and at the age of thirty-five, for the church of the Benedictines, the celebrated picture of the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul, now in the Dresden gallery: with some fresco paintings, drawn from Ariosto and Virgil, in the palace Scandiano. Of his works at Bologna, tradition has left a very distinguished account, though little or nothing exists of them now but the large symbolic picture in the Via di St. Mamolo; a nativity of Christ, under the portico of the Leoni palace; and four conversation pieces and concertos, of exquisite taste, in the Academical Institute, which have been engraved. Notwithstanding the innate vigour, the genial facility, and independent style of this artist, he owes his fame, in a great measure, to his coalition with Francisco Primaticcio, and to his happy execution of the designs of that great master, particularly the frescoes he painted in the galleries and apartments at Fountainbleau. These, however, being destroyed in 1738, to make room for a new fabric, nothing remains but a few pictures of the history of Alexander. Some of the others were engraved. The period of his death is not known .

, an eminent painter, was born at Cologne, in 1556, of a good family. He discovered a taste for his art from his earliest years, and at the age of eleven, painted a portrait with such success, as to induce his parents to encourage his studies. After having been for some time taught by a very indifferent painter, he became the disciple of de Georges, or Jerrigh, a good portrait-painter, with whom he remained six years; and afterwards improved himself by studying and copying the works of Spranger. In his twenty-second year he went to Italy, and was introduced at Venice to a Flemish artist, named Gaspard Reims. This man no sooner learned that Van Achen was a German, than he recommended him to an Italian who courted necessitous artists that he might make, a trade of their labours. With him Van Achen made some copies, but, being unable to forget the reception which Reims had given him, he painted his own portrait, and sent it to him. Reims was so struck with the performance, that he apologized to Van Achen, took him into his house, and preserved the portrait all his life with great veneration. At Venice, he acquired the Venetian art of colouring, and thence went to Rome to improve his design, but never quitted the mannered forms of Spranger. His best performances at Rome were a Nativity for the church of the Jesuits, and a portrait of Madona Venusta, a celebrated performer on the lute. His talents, however, and polite accomplishments, recommended him to several of the greatest princes of Europe, and particularly to the elector of Bavaria, and the emperor Rodolph, by both of whom he was patronized and honoured. He was one of that set of artists who, in the lapse of the sixteenth century, captivated Germany and its princes by the introduction of a new style, or rather manner, grossly compounded from the principles of the Florentine and Venetian schools. He died at Prague in 1621.

, a Spanish painter, born at Cordova, was a lay friar of the order of the bare-footed Carmelites. Of his works, which are not numerous, and are to be seen only at the place of his birth, the most remarkable is a Crucifixion, in the manner of Sadeler, whose style was much admired by him. He was so diffident of his own talents that he frequently destroyed his pictures as soon as he had executed them, and some were preserved by his friends, who begged them from him in the name of the souls in purgatory, for whom he constantly put op his prayers. He died at Cordova in 1650.

, a Dutch painter, born at Delft in 1602, acquired a great reputation by his delicate manner of painting fruit, still life, and dead game. He was exact in copying every thing after nature, disposing them with elegance, and finishing his pictures with neatness, and transparency of colour. Whether he painted dead game, fruit, helmets with plumes of feathers, or vases of gold and silver, to each he gave a true and striking resemblance of nature, and an extraordinary lustre to the gold, silver, and steel. He died in 1658.

, or Aartgen, a painter of merit, was the son of a wool-comber, and born at Leyden in 1498. He worked at his father’s trade till he was eighteen, and then, having discovered a genius for designing, he was placed with Cornelius Engelhechtz, under whom he made a considerable progress in painting. He became so distinguished, that the celebrated Francis Floris went to Leyden, out of mere curiosity, to see him, and being. directed to a very mean apartment, when Aertgen was absent, he drew a St. Luke on the wall; which Aertgen had no sooner seen, than he exclaimed, that Floris only could have done it, and went immediately in search of him. Floris solicited him to go to Antwerp, promising him wealth and rank suitable to his merit; but Aertgen refused, declaring that he found more sweets in his poverty than others did in their riches. It was a custom with this painter never to work on Mondays, but to devote that day with his disciples to the bottle. He used to stroll about the streets in the night, playing on the German flute; and in one of those frolics he was drowned, in 1564.

, called by the Italians PietroLongo, from his tallness, was a celebrated painter, and born at Amsterdam in 1519. His father, who was a stocking-maker, had intended to train him in his own way; but-the mother, finding in him an inclination towards painting, was resolved that her son should pursue his genius, even though she always were forced to spin for her livelihood: and to this her husband at length consented. His first master was Alart Claessen, an eminent painter in Amsterdam, under whom he so distinguished himself, that he soon engaged the attention of the great. When he was about eighteen, he went to Bossu in Hainault, to view the pieces of several masters; thence to Antwerp, where he married and entered into the company of painters. He excelled very particularly in representing a kitchen; and generally, upon all kinds of subjects. An altar-piece of his, viz. a crucifix, setting forth an executioner breaking with an iron bar the legs of the thieves, &c. was much admired. This noble piece was destroyed by the rabble in the time of the insurrection, 1566, although the lady of Sonneveldt, in Alckmaer, offered 200 crowns for its redemption, as the furious peasants were bringing it out of the church: but they tore it to pieces, and trod it under foot. This he afterwards complained of to the populace in terms of such severity, that more than once they were going to murder him. Pilkington, however, speaks of a fine altar-piece of his at Amsterdam, representing the death of the Virgin, as still existing; and of a Nativity and the Wise Men’s Offering at Delft, both excellent performances. He was well skilled in perspective and architecture, and enriched his grounds with elegant ornaments and animals. His figures were well disposed; their attitudes had abundance of variety, and their draperies were well chosen and well cast. He died in 1585, leaving three sons, who succeeded in his profession. He had a mean aspect, which he did not amend by any attention to the exterior; for he always appeared very meanly dressed.

, a Greek painter, highly praised by Cicero and Lucian, painted a picture, which he exhibited at the Olympic games, the subject of which was the nuptials of Alexander the Great and Roxana. It was so much applauded, that Proxenidas, who was one of the judges appointed to decide on the merits of the artists, enchanted with the talents of Ætion, bestowed on him his daughter in marriage. Lucian says that he saw this picture in Italy, and gives a very accurate description of it, from which Raphael sketched one of his richest compositions.

, an ancient painter, the son of Eudemus, was borti at Samos, and practised his art at Athens. He painted with great facility, and was distinguished for his skill in animals, ornaments, and decorations. Alcibiades employed him to decorate his magnificent house; and, according to Demosthenes (in his oration against Midias), while thus employed, he contrived to seduce the mistress of Alcibiades, who having discovered the intrigue, punished him no otherwise than by close imprisonment until he completed his work; and then dismissed him with many rich presents. Plutarch in his lives of Alcibiades and Pelopidas, speaks only of the imprisonment, which he imputes solely to Alcibiades’ impatience to have his house finished. From his connexion with Zeuxis and Alcibiades, it is probable that he lived about the ninety-fifth olympiad, or 400 years B. C.; but this does not accord with Vitruvius’s account, who informs us that Agatharcus was the first who painted scenes for the theatre; and wrote a treatise on the subject, under the direction of Æschylus, who died 480 B. C. This anachronism has given rise to the conjecture that there may have been two painters of the name.

, a surveyor and engraver in the sixteenth century, whose original plates are now extremely rare. He first drew a plan of London, which, though referred to the time of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. appears from several circumstances to have been made early in Elizabeth’s reign, about 1560, on wood. It was republished in 1618, with alterations, in six sheets, cut in wood, and re-engraved by Vertue in 1748. The plates were bought by the Society of Antiquaries, and published in 1776. His next performances were plans of Oxford and Cambridge, about 1578. The former is the oldest plan of the city of Oxford extant. It was engraved at the expence of the university in 1728, with ancient views, on the borders, of the colleges and schools as they originally stood. This plate was unfortunately destroyed at the fire which consumed so much literary property belonging to Mr. Nichols, in 1808. The only other plan of Aggas’s workmanship, now known, is one of Dumvich in SulVolk, dated March, 1589, on vellum, and not engraved. Ames attributes to him a work entitled “A Preparative to platting of Landes and Tenements for suweigh, &c.” 1596. He is supposed to have been related to Edward Aggas, the son of Robert Aggas, of Stoke-nayland in Suffolk, who was a bookseller of some note from 1576 to 1594; and from one or ether probably descended Robert Aggas, or Angus, a landscape painter and scene painter, whose best work extant is a landscape now in Painter-stainers hall. He died in London, 1679, aged about sixty.

, a Scotch painter of considerable eminence, was the son of William 8 Aiktnan, of Cairney, esq. and born Oct. 24, 1682. His father intended that he should follow the law, and gave him an education suitable to these views; but the strong predilection of the son to the fine arts induced him to attach himself to painting alone. Poetry, painting, and music have, with justice, been called sister arts. Mr. Aikman was fond of poetry; and was particularly delighted with those unforced strains which, proceeding from the heart, are calculated to touch the congenial feelings of sympathetic minds. It was this propensity which attached him so warmly to Allan Ramsay, the Doric bard of Scotland. Though younger than Ramsay, Mr. Aikman, while at college, formed an intimate acquaintance with him, which constituted a principal part of his happiness at that time, and of which he always bore the tenderest recollection. It was the same delicate bias of mind which at a future period of his life attached him so warmly to Thomson, who then unknown, and unprotected, stood in need of, and obtained the warmest patronage of Aikman; who perhaps considered it as one of the most fortunate occurrences in his life that he had it in his power to introduce this young poet of nature to sir Robert Walpole, who wished to be reckoned the patron of genius, and to Arbuthnot, Swift, Pope, Gay, and the other beaux esprits of that brilliant period. Thomson could never forget this kindness; and when he had the misfortune, too soon, to lose this warm friend and kind protector, he bewailed the loss in strains distinguished by justness of thought, and genuine pathos of expression.

, a celebrated painter, born at Bologna, March 17, 1578. His father was a silk merchant, and intended to bring up his son to that business; but Albano having a strong inclination to painting, when his father died, devoted himself entirely to that art, though then but twelve years of age. He first studied under Denys Calvart; Guido Rheni being at the same tune under this master, with whom Albano contracted very great friendship. Calvart drew but one profile for Albano, and afterwards left him entirely to the care of Guido; under whom he made great improvement. He followed Guido to the school of the Caraccis, but a little after their friendship for each other began to cool; which was owing perhaps to the pride of Albano, who could not bear to see Guido surpass him, or to the jealousy of Guido at finding Albano make so swift a progress. They certainly endeavoured to eclipse one another; for when Guido had set up a beautiful altar-piece, Albano would oppose to it some fine picture of his: and yet they continued to speak of each other with the highest esteem. Albano, after having greatly improved himself under the Caraccis, went to Rome, where he continued many years, and married in that city; but his wife dying in childbed, at the earnest request of his relations, he returned to Bologna, where he entered again into the state of matrimony. His second wife (Doralice) was well descended, but had very little fortune; which he perfectly disregarded, so strongly was he captivated with her beauty and good sense. Besides the satisfaction of possessing an accomplished wife, he reaped likewise the advantage of having a most beautiful model; so that he had now no occasion for any other woman to sit to him for Venus, the Graces, Nymphs, and other deities, whom he took a particular delight in representing. His wife answered this purpose admirably well; for, besides her bloom of youth, and the beauty of her person, he discovered in her so much modesty, so many graces and perfections, so well adapted to painting, that it was impossible for him to find a more finished woman. She afterwards brought him several boys, all extremely beautiful and finely proportioned; and she and her children were the originals of his most agreeable and graceful compositions. It was from them too that the famous sculptors Flamand and Algardi modelled their little cupids.

Our countryman, sir Robert Strange, gives this character of Albano’s paintings: “The pictures of Albano are exceedingly agreeable. His subjects are in general of the poetical kind. We may be almost sure of finding, in any picture of this master, beautiful figures of women; and children, who seem as if they had been nourished by the Graces. This artist, bred in the school of the Carracci, could not fail being an agreeable painter; and if he was not always successful in expressing the stronger passions of the soul, he knew how to touch and flatter the senses, by offering to his spectators the most pleasing and delightful images; where reigns with decency, an agreeable, and if I may be allowed the expression, even a voluptuous pleasure. What contributes to render his works inestimable, is a pencil whose freshness of colour and delicacy of touch is admirable: but he may be reprehended with overfinishing many of his pictures.” This eminent artist engraved three of his pictures: “The Three Maries at the Sepulchre; A Holy Family, with Angels; and another Holy Family.” Albani’s pictures of the “Four Elements,” formerly in the palace of the king of Sardinia, at Turin, and now in Paris, are of extraordinary beauty, and well preserved. The design is excellent, the draperies perfectly elegant, the colouring lovely, and the whole very correct. The composition is perhaps a little too dissipated, but that is a circumstance frequently observed in his works. His pictures were formerly in most of the palaces of Europe, but the greatest assemblage, we believe, is now at Paris. At Burghley house, are some fine tapestries from his designs; and there were probably some of his pictures in king Charles the First’s collection, as that prince once invited him to England.

, a painter of some distinction, but whose reputation is chiefly established by his engravings, was born in 1552 atBorgo S. Sepolcbro, from which he derived one of his names. From his father, Michele Alberti, he learned the first rudiments of historical painting, in which art he made very considerable progress. His greatest works are in fresco at Rome; and he also painted in oil, and combined some thought with much practice. From whose instructions he became an engraver is uncertain, but his best style of execution seems evidently to have been founded on the prints of C. Cort and Agostino Caracci, though in his friezes and other slighter plates he owed much to the works of Francesco Villemena. The engravings of Alberti are never very highly finished, or powerful in effect. The lights are scattered and left untinted, as well upon the distances, as upon the principal figures of the fore-ground, which destroys the harmony, and, prevents the proper gradation of the objects. The drawing of the naked parts of the figure, in the works of this artist, is rarely incorrect: the extremities are well marked, and the characters of the heads generally very expressive: but his draperies are apt to be rather stitf and hard. His prints may be considered as very extraordinary efforts of a great genius, whilst the art was as yet at some considerable distance from perfection. The number of plates, great and small, engraved by this artist, amounts to nearly one hundred and eighty, of which seventy-five are from his own compositions, the rest from Michael Angelo Buonaroti, Raphael, Polidoro, Andrea del Sarto, &c. The “Miracle of St. Philip Benizzo” is one of the most excellent. Alberti died in 1615.

, an eminent Italian artist, and one of the earliest scholars that appeared in the revival of letters, was of a noble and very ancient family at Florence, but was born at Venice in the end of the fourteenth, or beginning of the fifteenth century. Various authors have given 1398, 1400, and 1404, as the date of his birth. In his youth he was remarkable for his agility, strength, and skill in bodily exercises, and an unquenchable thirst of knowledge possessed him from his earliest years. In the learned languages he made a speedy and uncommon proficiency. At the age of twenty, he first distinguished himself by his Latin comedy entitled “Philodoxius,” copies of which he distributed among his friends, as the work of Lepidus, an ancient poet. The literati were completely deceived, and bestowed the highest applauses on a piece which they conceived to be a precious remnant of antiquity. It was written by him during the confinement of sickness, occasioned by too close an application to study, and appeared first about the year 1425, when the rage for ancient manuscripts was at its height, and Lepidus for a while took his rank with Plautus and Terence. Even in the following century, the younger Aldus Manutius having met with it in manuscript, and alike ignorant of its former appearance, and the purpose it was intended to serve, printed it at Lucca, 1588, as a precious remnant of antiquity. Alberti took orders afterwards in order to have leisure to prosecute his studies. In 1447 he was a canon of the metropolitan church of Florence, and abb of St. Savino, or of St. Ermete of Pisa. Although he became known to the world as a scholar, a painter, a sculptor, and an architect, it is to his works of architecture that he owes his principal fame. He may be regarded as one of the restorers of that art, of which he understood both the theory and practice, and which he improved by his labours as well as his writings. Succeeding to Brunelleschi, he introduced more graceful forms in the art; but some consider him notwithstanding as inferior to that celebrated architect. Alberti studied very carefully the remains of ancient architecture, which he measured himself at Rome and other parts of Italy, and has left many excellent specimens of his talents. At Florence, he completed the Pitti palace, and built that of Ruccellai, and the chapel of the same family in the church of St. Pancras; the facade of the church of Santa Maria Novella, and the choir of the church of Nunziata. Being invited to Rome by Nicholas V. he was employed on the aqueduct of PAqua Vergine, and to raise the fountain, of Trevi; but this having since been reconstructed by Clement XII. from the designs of Nicholas Salvi, no traces of Alberti’s work remain. At Mantua, he constructed several buildings, by order of Louis of Gonzaga, of which the most distinguished are the churches of St. Sebastian, and that of St. Andrew: the latter, from the grandeur and beauty of its proportions, is esteemed a model for ecclesiastical structures. But his principal work is generally acknowledged to be the church of St. Francis at Rimini.

, a celebrated artist, was born at Zoust in Westphalia, in 1502; but we have no account of his family, nor are we quite certain of his Christian name, some calling him Henry, and some Albert. It is said, that he went to Nuremberg, and studied under Albert Durer, as he copied his style. As a painter, he attained considerable fame: the principal part of his works are in the churches and convents of Germany. Des Piles mentions a “Nativity” by him, which he accounts worthy of the admiration of the curious. He is, however, chiefly known by his engravings; and as, like many of the ancient engravers, particularly of Germany, he applied himself chiefly to the engraving of small plates, he has been classed by French authors among those they call little masters, and in this class he claims the first rank. The mechanical part of his engraving is extremely neat, and executed entirely with the graver. The light parts upon his flesh he has often rendered very soft and clear, by the addition of small long dots, which he has judiciously interspersed. His drawing of the naked figure, which he seems very fond of introducing, is much correcter than is usually found among the old German masters; and much less of that stiff taste, so common to them, appears in his best works. But Florent le Comte’s observation is certainly very just, that his men figures are far more correct than his women. His heads are very expressive in general, and his other extremities well marked, but sometimes rather heavy. But as his prints are very numerous, amounting, according to abbe de Marolles, to no less than 350, they cannot be supposed to be all equal; it is, therefore, necessary to see many of his prints, before any adequate judgment can be formed. The first collection of them was formed by the burgomaster Six, but to this many additions were made by Mariette, to the amount of 390 pieces, comprising many duplicates with differences. This collection was sold in France, in 1805, for 660 francs. He died at Soest, in 1558, in very poor circumstances,

, one of the most laborious naturalists of the sixteenth century, and professor at Bologna, was born in 1527, of a noble family in that city, which still exists. He employed the greater part of his long life, and all his fortune, in travelling into the most distant countries, and collecting every thing curious in their natural productions. Minerals, metals, plants, and animals, were the objects of his curious researches; but he applied himself chiefly to birds, and was at great expence in having figures of them drawn from the life. Aubert le Mire says, that he gave a certain painter, famous in that art, a yearly salary of 200 crowns, for 30 years and upwards; and that he employed at his own expence Lorenzo Bennini and Cornelius Swintus, as well as the famous engraver Christopher Coriolanus. These expences ruined his fortune, and at length reduced him to the utmost necessity; and it is said that he died blind in an hospital at Bologna, May 4, 1605. Mr. Bayle observes, that antiquity does not furnish us with an instance of a design so extensive and so laborious as that of Aldrovandus, with regard to natural history; that Pliny indeed has treated of more subjects, but only touches them lightly, whereas Aldrovandus has collected all he could find.

, a Spanish painter of considerable eminence, was born at Cordova in 1640, educated under Castillo, and completed his studies with Velasquez at Madrid, whose style he copied, particularly in his portraits. Velasquez, who was the first painter to the king of Spain, procured Alfaro favourable opportunities to study the fine pictures in the royal collections; and Titian, Rubens, and Vandyke, became his principal models. Many of his pictures, particularly his small ones, are very much in the style of Vandyke. As he principally followed the lucrative business of portrait-painting, both in oil and miniature, he probably would have realized a considerable fortune, but a weakly state of health soon plunged him into melancholy, of which he died in his fortieth year. Mr. Cumberland attributes his death to grief, upon account of the banishment of the admiral of Castille, in whose family he was an inmate, and to his having been rejected when he went to pay his respects to the admiral on his release. Alfaro was not only a good painter, but wrote sensibly on th, art. Of his pictures, there is an “Incarnation” at Madrid, and a “Guardian Angel,” and a portrait of Don Pedro Caldefona, in the church of St. Salvador, which are verj conspicuous monuments of his skill.

Algarottihad also studied the fine arts, and produced many excellent specimens of painting and engraving. In particular he designed and engraved several plates of heads in groupes, one of which, containing thirteen in the antique style, is dated Feb. 15, 1744. He travelled likewise over Italy, with a painter and draftsman in his suite; and what he has published on the arts discovers extensive knowledge and taste. Frederick II. who had become acquainted with his talents when prince-royal, no sooner mounted the throne, than he invited him to Berlin. Algarotti was then in London, and, complying with his majesty’s wish, remained at Berlin many years. Frederick conferred on him the title of count of the kingdom of Prussia, with reversion to his brother and descendants. He made him also his chamberlain, and knight of the order of Merit, bestowing on him at the same time many valuable presents, and other marks of his esteem; and after Algarotti left Berlin, the king corresponded with him for twenty-five years. The king of Poland, Augustus III. also had him for some time at his court, and gave him the title of privy-­counselloir of war. Nor was he held in less esteem by the sovereigns of Italy, particularly pope Benedict XIV. the duke of Savoy, and the duke of Parma. The excellence of his character, the purity of his morals, his elegant manners, and the eclat which surrounds a rich amateur of the arts, contributed to his celebrity perhaps as much as the superiority of his talents, and his acknowledged taste. Wherever he travelled he was respected equally by the rich, and the learned, by men of letters, by artists, and by men of the world. The climate of Germany having sensibly injured his health, he returned first to Venice, and afterwards to Bologna, where he had determined to reside, but his disorder, a consumption of the lungs, gained ground rapidly, and put an end to his life, at Pisa, March 3, 1764. He is said to have met death with composure, or, as his biographer terms it, with philosophical resignation. In his latter days he passed his mornings with Maurino (the artist who used to accompany him in his travels), engaged in the study of painting, architecture, and the fine arts. After dinner he had his works read to him, then printing at Leghorn, and revised and corrected the sheets: in the evening he had a musical party. The epitaph he wrote for himself is taken from Horace’s non omnis moriar, and contains only the few words, “Hicjacet Fr. Algarottus non omnis” The king of Prussia was at the expense of a magnificent monument in the Campo Santo of Pisa; on which, in addition to the inscription which Algarotti wrote, he ordered the following, “Algarotto Ovidii emulo, Newtoni discipulo, Fredericus rex,” and Algarotti’s heirs added only “Fredericus Magnus.” The works of Algarotti were published at Leghorn, 1765, 4 vols. 8vo; at Berlin, 1772, 8 vols. 8vo; and at Venice, 17 vols. 8vo, 1791--1794. This last, the most complete and correct edition, is ornamented with vignettes, the greater part of which were taken from the author’s designs. These volumes contain 1. Memoirs of his life and writings, and his poetry. 2. An analysis of the Newtonian system. 3. Pieces on architecture, painting, the opera, essays on vario is languages, on history, philology, on Des Cartes, Horace, &c. 4 and 5. Essays on the military art, and on the writers on that subject. 6. His travels in Russia, preceded by an Essay on the metals of that empire: the congress of Cytherea, the life of Pallavicini, the Italian poet; and a humorous piece against the abuse of learning. 7. Thoughts on different subjects of philosophy and philology. 8. Letters on painting and architecture. 9 and 10. Letters on the sciences. 11 to 16. His correspondence, not before published, with the literati of Italy, England, and France. 17. An unfinished critical essay on the triumvirate of Crassus, Pompey, and Gassar. Among his correspondents we find the names of the Italians, Manfredi and Zanotti, his first masters, Fabri of Bologna, Metastasio, Frugoni, Bettinelli, Frisi the celebrated mathematician and physician, Mazzuchelli, Paradisi, &c.; the Prussians, Frederic II. several princes of the same family, and Form ey, &c.; the English, lords Chesterfield and Hervey, Mr. Hollis, lady Montague, &c.; jand the French, Voltaire, Maupercuis, du Chastellet, mad. du Boccage,; &c. His Essays on painting, on the opera, his Letters to lord Hervey and the marquis Maffei, and his Letters, military and political, have been translated and published in English. His biographers have generally handed down his character without a blemish; aiui Fabroni, on whom ive mostly rely, is equally lavish in his praises. Wiule we take his personal merits from these authorities, we have evident proof from his works that he was an universal scholar, and wrote with facility and originality on every subject he took in hand. They present a greater variety of reading and thought than almost any scholar of the eighteenth century; but they are not without redundancy, and sometimes affectation. His fame is said to be fixed on a more solid basis in his own country, than in those where he has been viewed only througn the medium of translations.

, a Scotch portrait and historical painter of the preceding century, was a native of Edinburgh, and patronised by sir William Erskine. He received the rudiments of his art in the academy of painting instituted, and carried on for a considerable time, by Messrs. Foulis, in Glasgow, Thence'he went to Italy, where he spent many years in unremitting application to the study of the great models of antiquity. At Rome in 1773, he gained the prize medal given by the academy of St. Luke for the best specimen of historical composition, and it is believed he was the only Scotchman (Gavin Hamilton excepted) who had then attained; that honour. After his return in 1777, he resided a few years in London; but about 1780 he went to Edinburgh, and was appointed director and master of the academy established in that metropolis by the board of trustees for manufactures and improvements, for the purpose of diffusing a knowledge of the principles of the fine arts, and elegance of design, in the various manufactures and works which require to be figured and ornamented; a charge for which he was peculiarly well qualified, by the extensive knowledge he possessed of every branch of the art. He was much admired for his talents in composition, the truth with which he delineated nature, and the characteristic humour that distinguished his pictures, drawings, and etchings. There are several engravings from his pictures, one “The Origin of Painting, or the Corinthian maid drawing, the shadow of her lover;” and four, in aqua tfnta, by Paul Sandby, from drawings made by Allan when at Rome, representing the sports during the carnival. Several of the figures introduced in them, are portraits of persons well known to the English who visited Rome between 1770 and 1780. Mr. Allan died Aug. 6, 1796. In private life, his character was marked by the strictest honour and integrity, and his manners were gentle, unassuming, and obliging.

, called Galanino, an eminent painter of history and portraits, received his education in the school of the Caracci, and in all his compositions retained the admirable style of his master. He had naturally a melancholy turn of mind, and was of a retired and solitary disposition: this induced him to avoid the conversation of his friends, and devote himself to the study of his art; but by this plan he became so necessitous, that he was compelled to paint portraits to procure a subsistence. In this branch, however, his success was astonishing; and he grew into the highest esteem, not only for the resemblance visible at first sight, and the beauty of his colouring, but also for a new and unusual boldness of manner, by which his portraits seemed absolutely to breathe. None of his contemporaries could enter into competition with him; and the Italian writers place him in the same rank of merit with Vandvck. He was born at Bologna in 1578, and died in 1638.

, called Bronzing, an eminent painter, was born at Florence in 1535, and was the disciple of Agnolo Bronzino, likewise a distinguished painter, who educated him with all the tenderness of a parent, Allori having been deprived of his own father, when he was but five years old. He was very studious, and applied himself diligently, not only to imitate the manner of his master, but the different manners of those masters who were in the greatest reputation. When he commenced painter, his first work was a crucifixion, intended for an altar-piece, which was much praised, but his success in portrait-painting induced him to employ a great deal of his time in that branch. Michael Angelo was the master whose works he studied with the greatest attention, and he designed a picture of the Last Judgment, after the manner of that great genius, which is preserved at Rome, and will perpetuate the honour of Allori. He died in 1607, aged 72. It is said that he wrote some burlesque poems, and a dialogue on Design. The existence of this last is denied by his French biographer, but we find its title in Haym’s Biblioteca Italiana, “Dialogo di Alessandro Allori pittore Florentine sopra l'arte del disegnare le figure principiando da Muscoli, Ossa, Nervi, Vene, Membra, Notomia, e figura perfetta,” Florence, 1590.

, a very eminent artist, was born in 1488, at Altdorffin Bavaria, and rose to be a member of the senate of Ratisbon, and architect to the town, where he died in 1578. His merit as a painter appears to have been very considerable, but much more as a designer and engraver. His works in wood and metal are as numerous as, in general, remarkable for diminutive size, though neither his conceptions nor forms were puny. The cuts of “The Passion,” “Jael and Siserah,” “Pyramus and Thisbe,” “Judah and Thamar,” if we allow for the ignorance of costume in the three last, show a sensibility of mind, and a boldness of design, which perhaps none of his German contemporaries can boast. Holbein is said to have drawn great assistance from him, evident traces of the style of Altorfer appearing in the prints of that inimitable artist, although certainly much improved.

, a painter of Nuremberg, of the sixteenth century, was the disciple of the younger Holbein, and a successful imitator of his manner. His designs were correct, the disposition of the figures admirable, and the perspective excellent, nor was he deficient in colouring. His chief reputation rests on a composition of the history of Joseph, which he described in twelve pictures. He also painted a portrait of the emperor Charles V. which that monarch, according to the testimony of Sandrart, accounted equal to any of the portraits of him painted by Titian; and to express his high approbation of that performance, he not only paid the artist three times as much as he expected, with a liberality truly royal, but he honoured him also with a rich chain of gold and a medal. There are several of his pictures in the royal gallery of Munich. The abbé Marolles, and, after him, Florent le Comte mention Amberger, as an engraver, without specifying his works; but Basan tells us, that he engraved in wood several prints, from his own compositions. He died in 1550.

Besides his great work, Mr. Ames printed a “Catalogue vf English Printers, from 1471 to 1700,” 4to, intended to accompany the proposals for the former; “An Index to lord Pembroke’s Coins;” “A Catalogue of English heads, or an account of about 2000 prints, describing what is peculiar on each, as the name, title, or office of the person, the habit, posture, age, or time when done, the name of the painter, graver, scraper, &c. and some remarkable particulars relating to their lives,” 1748, 8vo. This was a kind of index to the ten volumes of English portraits, which had been collected by Mr. John Nickolls, F. R. and A. Ss. of Ware in Hertfordshire, in four volumes folio, and six iii 4to; and which after his death in 1745, were purchased, for 50 guineas, by the late Dr. Fothergill. The last of Mr. Ames’s literary labours was the drawing up the “Parentalia, or Memoirs of the family of Wren,” 1750, in one volume folio, from the papers of Mr. Wren. At his expence two plates were engraved, one of a Greek inscription in honour of Crato, the musician of Pergamos; the other an ancient marble pillar, in his possession, with the Cufic inscription.

, a painter well known in England, was a native of Venice, and came to England in 1729, when he was about forty years of age. He had studied under Bellucci in the Palatine court, and had been some years in the elector of Bavaria’s service. His manner was a still fainter imitation of that nerveless master Sebastian Ricci, and as void of the glow of life as the Neapolitan Solimeni. His women are mere chalk; nor was this his worst defect: his figures are so entirely without expression, that his historical compositions seem to represent a set of actors in a tragedy, ranged in attitudes against the curtain draws up. His Marc Antonys are as free from passion as his Scipios. He painted some staircases of noblemen’s houses, and afterwards practised portrait-painting with rather more success. In 1736 he made a journey to Paris with the celebrated singer Farinelli, and returned with him in October following. His portrait of Farinelli was engraved. He then engaged with Wagner, an engraver, in a scheme of prints from Canaletti’s views of Venice, and after marrying an Italian singer, returned to his own country in 1739, having acquired here about 5000l. At last he settled in Spain, was appointed painter to the,king, and died in the 63d year of his age, at Madrid, September 1752. His daughters, the signora Belluomini and the signora Castellini, the latter a paintress in crayons, were living at Madrid in 1772, as Mr. Twiss informs us in, his Travels, p. 167, 1775, 4to.

Such is lord Orford’s account of this painter. Mr. Pilkington’s character is rather more favourable, although perhaps modern connoisseurs will place less dependance on it. Amiconi possessed, says this writer, a very fertile invention; his taste of design was considerably elegant; and the air and turn of some of his figures, in his best compositions, were allowed to have somewhat engaging, natural, and even graceful. He confessedly had many of the accomplishments of a good painter; but, although his merit must in many respects be allowed, and his drawing, in particular, is generally correct, yet his colouring is abundantly too cold, too pale, and (as it is termed by the artists) too mealy.

, a painter and engraver, was born at Zurich, June 1539. His youth and studies are involved in obscurity, and the first notice we have of him is in 1560, when he went to Nuremberg, where he was admitted a burgess, and where he died in 1591. Here he began in designs on wood, paper, and copper, that career of incessant and persevering exertion which over-ran all Germany. History, allegory, emblem, sciences, trades, arts, professions, rural sports, heraldry, portrait, fashions, were all served in their turns, and often served so well, that his inventions may still be consulted by the artist with advantage. He painted with great brilliancy on glass. His drawings hatched with the pen, or washed, have Italian characteristics of style and execution.

, the son of the two preceding, was born at Florence in 1578, and was also a comedian, and wrote several pieces for the theatre, and some poems. They once had a temporary reputation, but such as have survived to our times, are indebted to particular circumstances, independent of their merit. They are all in that bad style of Italian poetry, of the seventeenth century, peculiar to the school of Marino, and most of them, in the plot and conduct, are irregular and fantastic, and demonstrate a wretched taste in the public. The only piece worthy of our notice is his “Adamo,” a sacred drama in five acts, with chorusses, &c. Milan, 1613 and 1617, with prints designed by Carlo Antonio Proccachini, a celebrated landscape painter of his time, and of the school of the Carracci, but in a wretched style, paradise being represented as full of clipt hedges, square parterres, strait walks, &c. But what is more interesting, Voltaire, in his visit to England in 1727, suggested that Milton took his hint of the Paradise Lost from this drama. This obtained little credit at the time, and was contemptuously rejected by Dr. Johnson in his life of Milton. Mr. Hayley, however, has revived the question, and with considerable advantage to Voltaire’s supposition, and it seems now to be the opinion that the coincidence between Andreini’s plan and Milton’s is too great to be the effect of chance. We have no account of Andreini’s death.

, or more properly Andrea Del Sarto, so called from his father’s trade, that of a tailor, but whose family name was Venucci, was born at Florence in 1488, and at first instructed in his art by Barile, a mean painter, with whom he spent three years, at the end of which Barile placed him with Peter Cosimo, then accounted one of the best painters in Italy. Under him, he made astonishing proficiency, and his abilities began to be acknowledged, but Cosimo' s morose temper obliged him to leave him, and seek instruction in the works of other artists. As he had, while with Cosimo, employed himself in designing after Vinci, Raphael, and Buonaroti, to whose works he had access at Florence, he persisted in the same practice, formed an admirable taste, and excelled his young rivals at home or abroad, in correctness, colouring, and knowledge of his art. Having contracted a friendship with Francesco Bigio, they determined to live together, and painted a great many works in the churches and convents of Florence, jointly, but Andrea’s reputation began to predominate, and seemed fixed by his representation of the preaching of St. John, executed for the Carmelites at Florence. Some time after this, he went to Rome to study the models of art in that city, but it is thought he did not remain there long enough to reap all the benefit which he might. The excellence of his pencil, and his power of imitation, were remarkably displayed in the copy he made of Leo X. between cardinal Medici and cardinal Rom, the head and hands by Raphael, and the draperies by Julio Romano. The imitation was so exact, that Julio, after the most minute inspection, and being told that it was a copy, could not distinguish it from the original. His superior talents might have raised him to opulence, if his imprudence had not reduced him to shame and poverty. The French king, Francis I. who was extremely partial to his works, invited him to his court, defrayed the expences of his journey, and made him many valuable presents. For a portrait, only, of the Dauphin, an infant, he received tjjree hundred crowns of gold, and he painted many other pictures for the court and nobility, for which he was liberally rewarded. While employed on a picture of St. Jerome, for the queen dowager, he received letters from his wife, soliciting his return to Florence, and, to indulge her, of whom he was excessively fond, he asked, and obtained a few months absence. It was on this occasion that the king, confiding in his integrity, made him several princely presents, and intrusted him with large sums of money to purchase statues, paintings, &c.; but Andrea instead of executing his commission, squandered away not only his own, but the money intrusted to him, became poor, and despised, and at last died of the plague, in his forty-second year, abandoned by his wife, and by all those friends who had partaken of his extravagance. His principal works were at Florence, but there were formerly specimens in many of the palaces and churches of Italy and France. All the biographers and critics of painters, except perhaps Baldinucci, have been lavish in their praises of Andrea. Mr. Fuseli, in his much improved edition of Pilkington, observes, that, on comparing the merits of his works, they seem to have obtained their full share of justice. As a Tuscan, says that judicious critic, the suavity of his tone, and facility of practice, contrast more strikingly with the general austerity and elaborate pedantry of that school, and gain-him greater praise than they would, had he been a Bolognese or Lombard. It cannot, however, be denied, that his sweetness sometimes borders on insipidity; the modesty, or rather pusillanimity of his character, checked the full exertion of his powers; his faults are of the negative kind, and defects rather than, blemishes. He had no notions of nature beyond the model, and concentrated all female beauty in his Lucrezia (his wife), and if it be true that he sacrificed his fortune and Francis I. to her charms, she must at least have equalled in form and feature his celebrated Madonna del Sacco; hence it was not unnatural that the proportions of Albert Durer should attract him more than those of Michael Angelo. His design and his conceptions, which seldom rose above the sphere of common or domestic life, kept pace with each other; here his observation was acute, and his ear open to every whisper of social intercourse or emotion. The great peculiarity, perhaps the great prerogative, of Andrea appears to be that parallelism of composition, which distinguishes the best of his historical works, seemingly as natural, obvious, and easy, as inimitable. In solemn effects, in alternate balance of action and repose, he excels all the moderns, and if he was often unable to conceive the actors themselves, he gives them probability and importance, by place and posture. Of costume he was ignorant, but none ever excelled, and few approached him in breadth, form, and style of that drapery which ought to distinguish solemn, grave, or religious subjects.

, da Fiesole, so called from the place where he was born, in 1387. He was at first the disciple of Giottino, but afterwards became a Dominican friar, and in that station was as much admired for his piety as his painting. His devout manner procured him the name of Angelico, or the angelic painter, and it is said that he never took up his pencil without a prayer, and had his eyes filled with tears when representing the sufferings of our Saviour. Nicholas V. employed him in his chapel, to paint historical subjects on a large scale, and prevailed on him soon after to decorate several books with miniature paintings. Although there are in his best paintings considerable defects, yet he was a most skilful instructor, and his amiable temper procured him many scholars. He always painted religious subjects; and it is given as a proof of his extraordinary humility, that he refused the Archbishopric of Florence when tendered to him by Nicholas V. as the reward of his talents. With respect to the objections made to his pictures, we are farther told, that he purposely left some great fault in them, lest his self-love might be too much flattered by the praises that would have been bestowed; a practice, however absurd in an artist, not unsuitable to monkish ideas of mortification. He died in 1443.

, a painter of considerable note in the last century, was born at Dunkirk in 1685, and visiting Flanders and Germany in the course of his studies, made the longest stay at Dusseldorpe, enchanted with the treasures of painting in that city. He came to England about the year 1712, and soon became a favourite painter; but in the year 1728, he set out for Italy, where he spent three years. At Rome his pictures gave great satisfaction, but being of a reserved temper, and not ostentatious of his merit, he disgusted several by the reluctance with which he exhibited his works; his studious and sober temper inclining him more to the pursuit of his art than to the advantage of his fortune. Yet his attention to the latter prevented his returning to England, as he intended; for, stopping at Rennes in Bretagne, a rich and parliamentary town, he was so immediately overwhelmed with employment there, that he settled in that city, and died there in a short time, in 1734, when he was not above forty nine years of age. He executed conversations and landscapes with small figures, which he was fond of enriching with representations of fruit and fish. His manner was a mixture of Teniers and Watteau, with more grace than the former, and more nature than the latter. His pencil was easy, bright, and flowing, but his colouring too faint and nerveless. He afterwards adopted the habits of Rubens and Vandyck, more picturesque indeed, but not so proper to improve his productions in what their chief beauty consisted, familiar life.

, an eminent Italian paintress, was born at Cremona in 1533, of a distinguished family. The author of the Museum Fforentinum is guilty of a very remarkable anachronism, in regard to Sophonisba; for he hxes her birth in 1559, in which year it w absolutely impossible she could have been born. This appears incontestabiy from Vasari, who tells us, that she painted the portrait of the queen of Spain, by order of Pope Paul IV. in 1561; and to prove this fact, he inserts the letter which she sent along with the picture to the Pope, and also the Pope’s answer, both dated in 1561; Sophonisba’s from Madrid the 16th of September, and the Pope’s from Rome the 15th of October; at which time, according to the Museum Florentinum, she could have been only two years old, if born in 1559. The first instructor of this eminent paintress was Bernardini Campo of Cremona; but she learned colouring and perspective from Bernardo Gatti, called Soiaro. One of her first performances was the portrait of her father, placed between his two children, with such strong characters of life and nature, with a pencil so free and firm, and so lively a turn of colour, that her work was universally applauded, and she was acknowledged an incomparable painter of portraits. Through every part of Italy she is distinguished by no other name than that of Sophonisba. But although portraits engrossed the greatest part of her time, yet she designed several historical subjects, with figures of a small size, touched with abundance of spirit, and with attitudes easy, natural, and graceful. By continual application to her profession she lost her sight; and it is recorded thatVandyck, having had an opportunity of conversingjwith Sophonisba, used to say, that he received more beneficial knowledge of the two principles of his art from one blind woman, than by studying all the works of the greatest masters of Italy. At Lord Spencer’s, at Wimbledon, there is a portrait of Sophonisba, playing on the' harpsichord, painted by herself; an old woman appears as her attendant; and on the picture is written, Jussu Patris. And at Wilton, in the Pembroke collection, is the marriage of St. Catherine, painted by Sophonisba. One of her sisters, named Lucia Angusciola, painted portraits, and gained by her performances a reputation not inferior to Sophonisba, as well in regard to the truth and delicacy of her colouring, as the justness of the resemblance. And another of her sisters, named Europa Angusciola, from her infancy manifested an extraordinary turn for painting, and shewed such taste and elegance in her manner of design, as to procure a degree of applause almost equal to Lucia or Sophonisba.

, so called because he was of that city, was also named Antonello. He was born in 1426, and died in 1475. He was the first of the Italians who painted in oil. Having seen at Naples a picture which king Alfonso had just received from Flanders, he was so struck with the liveliness, force, and softness of the colours, that he quitted his business to go and find out John Van Eyck, who he had been told was the painter of it. The consequences of this journey were, that Van Eyck communicated to him his secret; and on. the return of Antonio to Venice, Bellin artfully inveigled it out of him, and published it abroad. In the mean time, Antonio had intrusted it to one of his scholars, named Dominico. This Dominico, being called to Florence, gratuitously imparted it to Andrew del Castagno, who, actuated by the basest ingratitude and the greediness of gain, assassinated his friend and benefactor. All these incidents happening in rapid succession, occasioned the mystery of painting in oil to be quickly spread over all Italy. The schools of Venice and Florence were the foremost to adopt it; but that of Rome did not hesitate long to follow their example. Although we have given 1426 and 1475 as the dates of his birth and death, they are not absolutely settled by any of his biographers. Gallo is of opinion that he was born in 1447, and died in 1496. Vasari leaves the matter in doubt.

Apelles left many excellent pictures, which are men^ tioned with great honour by the ancients; but his Venus Anadyomene is reckoned his master-piece. His Antigonus has also been much celebrated: this was drawn with a side-face, to hide the deformity of Antigonus, who had lost an eye. His picture of Calumny has also been much noticed, and is thus explained by Lucian: Antiphilus the painter, being piqued at the favour shown to Apelles at the court of Ptolemy, accused him of being an accomplice in the conspiracy of Theodotus, governor of Phoenicia: he affirmed that he had seen Apelles at dinner with Theodotus, and whispering to him all the time of his entertainment. Ptolemy was also informed by the same person, that by the advice of Apelles, the city of Tyre had revolted, and that of Pelnsium was taken. Although it was certain that Apelles had never been at Tyre, and that he was not acquainted with Theodotus, Ptolemy was so enraged, that, without examining into the affair, he determined to put to death the person accused; and if one of the conspirators had not convinced him that this was a mere calumny of Antiphilus, Apelles must undoubtedly have suffered death upon this accusation. But as soon as Ptolemy knew the truth of this affair, he condemned Antiphilus to be a slave to Apelles, and gave the latter a hundred talents. Mr. Bayle remarks upon this account of Lucian, that he has fallen into a great anachronism; for the conspiracy of Theoclotus was in the reign of Ptolemy Philopater, which did not begin till an hundred years after the death of Alexander the Great; and for what he asserts, he quotes the authority of Polybius (lib. iv. and v.) “We must therefore,” says he, “suppose one or other of these two things; either that Lucian speaks of an Apelles, different from him who was in such reputation at Alexandria; or that he has confounded some plot which was contrived under Ptolemy Philadelphus, with the conspiracy of Theo dotus.”

, a celebrated Athenian painter, flourished about the year 408 before the Christian aera. He applied the essential principles of his predecessor Polygnotus to the delineation of the species, by investigating the leading forms that discriminate the various classes of human qualities and passions. The acuteness of his taste led him to discover that as all men were connected by one general form, so they were separated each by some predominant power, which fixed character, and bound them to a class: that in proportion as this specific power partook of individual peculiarities, the farther it was removed from a share in that harmonious system which constitutes nature, and consists in a due balance of all its parts: thence he drew his line of imitation, and personified the central form of the class, to which his object belonged; and to which the rest of its qualities administered without being absorbed: agility was not suffered to destroy firmness, solidity, or weight; nor strength and weight agility: elegance did not degenerate to effeminacy, or grandeur swell to hugeness. Such were his principles of style; his expression extended them to the mind, if we may judge from the two subjects mentioned by Pliny, in which he seems to have personified the characters of devotion and impiety: the former, in the adoring figure of a priest, perhaps of Chryses, expanding his gratitude at the shrine of the God whose arrows avenged his wrongs and restored his daughter: and the latter, in the figure of Ajax wrecked, and from the sea-swept rock hurling defiance unto the murky sky. As neither of these subjects can present themselves to a painter’s mind without a contrast of the most awful and the most terrific tones of colour, magic of light and shade, and unlimited command over the tools of art, we may with Pliny and with Plutarch consider Apollodorus as the first assertor of the pencil’s honours, as the first colourist of his age, and the man who opened the gates of art which Zeuxis entered.

, an eminent painter, was a native of Thebes, and contemporary with Apelles, about the year 300 or 340 B. C. His cheftfaeuvrc was the sacking of a town. Mr. Fuseli gives a very high character of him and of it. He applied the refinements of art to the mind. The passions which history had organized for Timanthes (an illustrious predecessor), Aristides caught as they rose from the breast, or escaped from the lips of nature herself: his volume was man, his scene society: he drew the subtle discriminations of mind in every stage of life, the whis. pers t the simple cry of passion, and its most complex accents. Such, as history informs us, was the suppliant whose voice you seemed to hear, such his sick man’s half extinguished eye and labouring breast, such the sister dying for her brother, and above all, the half-slain mother shuddering lest the eager babe should suck the blood from her palsied nipple. This picture was probably at Thebes, when Alexander sacked that town: what his feelings were when he saw it, we may guess from his sending it to Pella. Its expression, poised between the anguish of maternal affection and the pangs of death, gives to commiseration, an image, which neither the infant piteously caressing his slain mother in the groupe of Epigonus, nor the absorbed feature of the Niobe, nor the struggle of the Laocoon, excite. Euphranor the Isthmian, who excelled equally as painter and statuary, was the disciple of Aristides, and carried the refinements of expression still farther. Pliny gives an account of the principal works of Aristides, a great part of which were destroyed at the taking of Corinth by the Romans. King Attalus, having discovered among the booty a Bacchus painted by Aristides, offered 6000 sesterces for it, which Mummius the consul hearing, got possession of the picture, and brought it to Rome. When on his death-bed, Aristides began an Iris, which he left unfinished, and which no painter of the age would undertake to finish.

, a celebrated painter, was born at Geneva, May 18, 1668. He was originally educated for the church, but his inclination soon led him to painting, in which he made a rapid progress. He painted miniature with success, and when he came to Paris in 1688, he obtained the favour of the duke of Orleans, who chose him for an instructor in the art, and gave him an apartment at St. Cloud, that he might be with him more frequently. He was likewise highly favoured by the princess Palatine, the duke’s mother, who presented him with her own picture set with diamonds; and also gave him recommendatory letters to the court of Great Britain, particularly to the princess of Wales, afterwards queen Caroline. Her portrait was universally admired, and celebrated by several of the poets; and, at his return to Paris, he was loaded with presents, among which were many medals of gold. Having copied a Leda, perhaps the famous Leda of Corregio, destroyed by the bigotry of the regent’s son, all Paris was struck with the performance. The due de la Force gave 12,000 livres for it, but being a sufferer, by the Missisippi (probably before the picture was paid for) restored it to the artist with 4,000 livres for the use of it. In 1721, Arlaud brought this masterpiece to London, and sold a copy of it for 600l. sterling, but would not part with the original. While in England he received many medals as presents, which are still in the library of Geneva. But Leda was again condemned to be the victim of devotion.

In 1738 Arlaud destroyed her himself in a fit of superstitious piety, yet with such a degree of tenderness, that he cut her to pieces anatomically: this was done at Geneva, where her two hands are still preserved in the library. Mons. de Champeau, the French resident, obtained the head and one foot; but it is unknown what became of the rest. These facts are extracted from the poems of Mons. de Bar, printed at Amsterdam in 3 vols. 1750. In the third volume is an ode to the Leda in question. The painter died May 25, 1743.

In 1771 he published another extraordinary effusion of spleen, under the title of “A short Ramble through some parts of France and Italy,” under his assumed name of Lancelot Temple. This ramble he took in company with Mr. Fuseli, the celebrated painter, who speaks highly in favour of the general benevolence of his character. In 1773, under his own name, and unfortunately for his reputation, appeared a quarto pamphlet of “Medical Essays,” in which, while he condemns theory, he plunges into all the uncertainties of theoretical conjecture. He complains, likewise, in a very coarse style, of the neglect he met with as a physician, and the severity with which he was treated as an author, and appears to write with a temper soured by disappointment in all his pursuits.

, the son of a painter named Cesari at Arpino, was born at Rome in 1560. While yet in his 13th year his father placed him with the artists employed by Gregory XIII. in painting the lodges of the Vatican, whom he served in the humble employment of preparing their pallets and colours. But, in this situation he discovered such talents, that the pope gave orders to pay him a golden crown per day so long as he continued to work in the Vatican. Pope Clement VIII. distinguished him by adding new and higher favours to those of Gregory XIII. He made him chevalier of the order of Christ, and appointed him director of St. John de Lateran. In 1600 he followed the cardinal Aldobrandini, who was sent legate on occasion of the marriage of Henry IV. with Mary de Medicis. Caravagio, his enemy and his rival, having attacked him, Arpino refused to fight him because he was not a knight, and in order to remove this obstacle, Caravagio was obliged to go to Malta to be admitted chevalierservant. Arpino wanted likewise to measure swords with Annibal Carachio, but the latter, with becoming contempt, took a pencil in his hand, and, shewing it to him, said, “With this weapon I defy you.” Arpino died at Rome in 1640, at the age of four-score. He was among painters what Marino was among poets, born to dazzle and to seduce, and both met with a public prepared to prefer glitter to reality. He is said to have conducted some of his first pictures from designs of Michel Angelo, but it was less their solidity that made him a favourite, than the facility, the fire, the crash, and the crowds, that filled his compositions. The horses which he drew with great felicity, the decisive touch that marked his faces, pleased all; few but artists could distinguish manner from style, and them his popularity defied. The long course of his practice was distinguished by two methods, in fresco and in oil. The first, rich, vigorous, amene, and animated, has sufficient beauties to balance its faults; it distinguishes, with several altar-pieces, his two first frescos in the Campidoglio, the Birth of Romulus, and the Battle of the Sabines; and with this class might be numbered some of his smaller works, with lights in gold, and exquisitely finished; this method, however, soon gave way to the second, whose real principle was dispatch, free but loose and negligent; in this he less finished than sketched, with numberless other works, the remainder of the frescos in the Campidoglio, forty years after the two first. He reared a numerous school, distinguished by little more than the barefaced imitation of his faults, and a brother Bernardino Cesari, who was an excellent copyist of the designs of Michel Angelo, but died young. Among painters he is sometimes known by the name of II Cavalier d'Arpino, and sometimes by that of Josephin. Mr. Fuseli has given the above character of him under that of Cesari.

, an eminent landscape painter, was born at Brussels in 1613, and having been carefully instructed in the art of painting by Wildens (as some authors imagine), he perfected himself by a studious observation of nature. His landscapes have an agreeable solemnity, by the disposition of his trees, and the breaking of his grounds the distances are well observed, and die away perspectively, with a bluish distance of remote hills and his figures are properly and very judiciously placed. His pencil is soft, his touch light and free, particularly in the leafing of his trees; and there is generally a pleasing harmony in the whole. It is said that Teniers either painted or retouched the figures of his landscapes. He is remarkable for always ornamenting the stems of his trees with moss, ivy, or other plants, the extremities of which are often loosely hanging down. His pictures are coloured with a force resembling those of Titian, except that sometimes they are a little too dark. Mechlin, Brussels, Ghent, and the gallery of Dusseldorp, were ornamented with many of his pictures. In the course of his practice, he acquired a good fortune, but is said to have dissipated it by giving entertainments to persons of rank. He died in 1665, aged fifty- two.

, a Swiss painter, was born 1499, at Zurich, and painted portraits with so much life, nature, and character, that his reputation was little inferior to that of Holbein. His drawings in water-colours, of birds, fishes, dead game, and flowers, though done with great simplicity and freedom, are nearly deceptions. He is said to have furnished the designs for Conrad Gesner’s “Historia Animalium” nor was he ignorant of historic composition. Many of Rodolph Meyer’s etchings for Murer’s ' Helvetia Sancta" were drawn from his originals. To record his merit, a medal was struck, with his head, name, and age, in front and on the reverse, a death’s skull, with a moral sentence in rhyme. That he should have been suffered, after such a pledge of public esteem, to live and die in indigence, is not easily accounted for. He died in 1571.

, a Flemish painter, was born at Antwerp in 1610, and was a disciple of Esaias Vandervelde, and under the guidance of so able a master, he became an excellent painter of landscape. His companions nicknamed him Crabbetje, from a crooked turn in his fingers and his hand, which caused him to hold his pallet with some degree of awkwardness. And yet, by the lightness, freedom, and spirit of his touch, it could not be supposed that his hand had the smallest imperfection. He was one of the first Flemish painters who adopted the clean and bright manner of landscape painting. He studied after nature in the country about Rome, improving his taste by the delightful situations of towns, villas, antiquities, figures, and animals, which he sketched upon paper, to make a proper use of them in his designs. In the style of his landscape he chose particularly to imitate Claude Lorraine but in other parts of his painting he seemed fond of making Bamboccio his model. He enriched his landscapes with the vestiges of noble buildings, and the views of such seats as he observed to be beautiful, by their situation or construction. His colouring is extremely bright and clear his skies are warm his touch is free and firm his figures and animals are w r ell drawn, and judiciously disposed and his pictures justly merit the approbation which they have always received.

, an artist, more indebted to fortune than genius, for the distinction he obtained, was born at Wemm in Shropshire, where his father practised physic. When of an age to assume a profession, he was sent to London, and placed as a pupil under Mr. Hudson. He afterwards visited Rome, and was there about the same time with sir Joshua Reynolds. After returning to England, he resided some months at a friend’s house in London, and went thence to Dublin, where he practised as a painter for three years, and with such success as to acquire 3000l. On his return, he accidentally bemame acquainted with the opulent widow of sir William Daniel, whom he married, and eventually got possession of the Duckenfield estate, valued at 5000l. per annum. He then bought Schomberg house in Pall-mall, which he divided into three houses, inhabiting the centre house himself, now Mr. Payne’s. Towards his latter days, he began to repent of having passed much of his life in dissipation and by a transition not very uncommon, dreaded being reduced to want. He died at his house, Duckenfield-lodge, Cheshire, Nov. 14, 1787, and was buried at the church of that village. As an artist, his talents were by no means of an inferior class, particularly in portrait painting but he had not much delight in his profession, and when he obtained a fortune, practised no longer.

, a French Jesuit and painter, attached to the mission to Pekin, was born at Dole, in Tranche-Comté, July 31, 1702, and at first took lessons in painting, and made considerable proficiency under his father, who was an artist. He then went to Rome, under the patronage of the marquis de Brossa, and on his return, painted some pictures at Lyons, which procured him great reputation. In his thirtieth year he entered among the Jesuits, in the humble character of a lay- brother, and some, years afterwards, when the missionaries of Pekin demanded the services of a painter, he obtained the appointment, and went to China about the end of 1737. He had no sooner arrived at Pekin than he offered the emperor a painting of the Adoration of the Kings, with which the emperor was so much pleased that he ordered it to be placed in his interior apartment. Notwithstanding this promising outset, he underwent many mortifications, in being obliged to comply with the bad taste of the Chinese in what paintings he executed for them, and was so teazed by the emperor himself, that, in order to please him, he was obliged to take lessons from the Chinese artists but finding that a compliance with their instructions must spoil his performances, and injure his reputation, he declined painting for his majesty. Ddring the years, however, from 1753 to 1760, distinguished by many victories gained by the emperor Kien Long, he had frequent orders for battlepieces, &c. which he executed so much to the satisfaction of that monarch, that he created him a mandarin, and when Attiret refused to accept it, the minister of state told him he should have the revenues, although he declined the honour. The missionaries speak in the highest terms of his talents, modesty, and piety. He died at Pekin, Dec. 8, 1768, and the emperor defrayed the expences of his funeral the large pictures he painted for the emperor are in the palace, but never shown the missionaries can exhibit only one picture, “The Guardian Angel,” which is in the chapel of the Neophites, in the French missionary church at Pekin. There is nothing of Attiret' s in print, except a letter in the “Recueil des Lettres Edifiantes,” vol. XXVII. which was translated by the late Rev. Joseph Spence, under his assumed name of sir Harry Beaumont, entitled “A particular account of the emperor of China’s gardens near Pekin, in a letter from father Attiret, a French missionary, now employed by that emperor to paint the apartments in those gardens, to his friend at Paris,” London, 1752, 8vo.

, a celebrated painter of flowers, plants, birds, fish, &c. w&s born at Chalons sur Marne, about the middle of the seventeenth century. He was first employed to make drawings in the king’s garden, and discovered such accuracy, that Tournefort engaged him to go with him to the Levant in that voyage which he took in 1700. On his return he succeeded Joubert as king’s painter in the royal garden, where he continued the fine collection of natural history begun at Blois by the famous Nicholas Robert, by order of Gaston of Orleans. Aubriet 1 s most celebrated work, is a volume of paintings of sea-fish which Louis XIV. kept alive in his managerie, and which are admirably executed. The plates of Vaillant’s “Botanicou Parisiense,” 1727, were also done from, his designs and the imperial library is enriched by three superb volumes of fish, butterflies, birds, c. The collection, above-mentioned, begun by Nicholas Robert, and continued by Joubert and Aubriet, forms sixty-six folio volumes, which are now deposited in the library belonging to the botanical garden, Paris. Aubriet died at Paris in 1740, upwards of eighty-nine years of age.

Mr. Strutt considers Gerard Audran as the greatest engraver, without any exception, that ever existed in the historical line, an opinion, which, he thinks, a careful examination of “The Battles of Alexander” alone, will justify. His great excellency, above that of any other engraver, was, that though he drew admirably himself, yet he contracted no manner of his own but transcribed on copper simply, with great truth and spirit, the style of the master, whose pictures he copied. On viewing his prints, we lose sight of the engraver, and naturally say,* it is Le Brun, it is Poussin, &c. “This sublime artist,” says the Abbe Fontenai, borrowing chiefly from M. Basan, “far from conceiving that a servile arrangement of strokes, and the too frequently cold and affected clearness of the graver, were the great essentials of historical engraving, gave worth to his works by a bold mixture of free hatchings and dots, placed together apparently without order, but with an inimitable degree of taste and has left to posterity most admirable examples of the style in which grand compositions ought to be treated. His greatest works, which have not a very flattering appearance to the ignorant eye, are the admiration of true connoisseurs, and persons of real taste. He acquired the most profound knowledge of the art by the constant attention and study which he bestowed upon the science of design, and the frequent use he made of painting from nature. He always knew how to penetrate into the genius of the painter he copied from and often improved upon, and sometimes even surpassed him.” Mr. Strutt has given a list of his principal engravings, divided into four classes, to which we refer the reader.

, a painter from necessity and a poet by taste, died in indigence, in constant attachment to his two professions, at Paris, his birth-place, in the hospital of Incurables, in 1745. D'Autreau, although of a gloomy and melancholy character, wrote comedies that excited laughter, and continue to amuse upon the stage. He was almost sixty when he first turned his thoughts to the drama, an employment that demands all the vivacity and imagination of youth but his plots are too simple, the catastrophe is immediately perceived, and the pleasure of surprise is lost. His dialogue, however, is natural, his style easy, and some of his scenes are in the true comic taste. The Italian theatre has preserved his “Port a PAnglois,” in prose “Democrite pretendu fou,” in three acts, and in verse. The theatres of France have represented “Clorinda,” a tragedy in five acts the “Chevalier Bayard,” in five acts and the “Magie de l'Amour,” a pastoral in one act, in verse. He gave at the opera, “Platee, ou la Naissance de la Comedie,” the music by the celebrated Rameau. “Le Port a l'Anglois” is the first piece in which the Italian players spoke French. The works of d‘Autreau were collected in 1749, in 4 vols. 12mo, with a good preface by Pesselier. The most known of the pictures of this painter, is that of Diogenes, with the lanthern in his hand, in search of an honest man, and finding him in the cardinal de Fleury. D’Autreau lived very retired, de*. spising all that the generality of mankind esteem, and agreeing with the public in no one thing except in the little concern he took about himself.

, bart. V.P.A.S. and F.R.S. of Framfield in Sussex, was descended from a Saxon family, anciently seated at Bocton Alof near Wye, in the county of Kent, in the reign of Henry III. who removed to Hornchurch, in the county of Essex, in that of Henry IV. and to Sudbury in that of Edward IV. Sir William Ayloffe of Great Braxtead, in the county of Essex, was knighted by James I. May 1, 1603, and created a baronet, Nov. 25, 1612; and from his eldest son by his third wife, the late baronet was the fourth in descent, and fifth in title. His father Joseph, a barrister, who married a daughter of Bryan Ayliffe, an eminent merchant of London, and died in 1717, and his grandfather, were both of Gray’s Inn. He was born about 1703, received the early part of his education at Westminster school, admitted of Lincoln’s Inn 1724, and in the same year was entered a gentleman-commoner at St. John’s college, Oxford, which college he quitted about 1728; elected F.A.S. Feb. 10, 1731-2, one of the first council under their charter, 1751 vice-president, 17; and F.R.S. June 3, 1731. He prevailed on Mr. Kirby, painter in Ipswich, to make drawings of a great number of monuments and buildings in Suffolk, of which twelve were engraved, with a description, 1748, and others remain unpublished. He had at that time an intention to write a history of the county, and had drawn up proposals for that purpose but, being disappointed of the materials which he had reason to expect for so laborious a work, they were never published. On the building of Westminsterbridge he was appointed secretary to the commissioners, 1737 and on the establishment of the Paper-office on the respectable footing it at present is, by the removal of the state-papers from the old gate at Whitehall to new apartments at the Treasury, he was nominated the first in the commission for the care and preservation of them. In 1747 he circulated “Proposals for printing by subscription, Encyclopaedia; or, a rational Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Trade. By several eminent hands. Methodized, digested, and now publishing at Paris, by M. Diderot, fellow of the Imperial and Royal Academies of Paris and St. Petersburgh and, as to the mathematical part, by M. d'Alembert, member of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris and Berlin, aud F. R. S. Translated from the French, with additions and improvements;” in which was to be included a great variety of new articles, tending to explain and illustrate the antiquities, history ecclesiastical, civil, and military, laws, customs, manufactures, commerce, curiosities, &c. of Great Britain and Ireland by sir Joseph Ayloffe, bart. F. R. S. and of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and author of “The Universal Librarian.” Of this work a prospectus was published, in one large sheet, dated Dec. 14, 1751 and the first number of the work itself, June 11, 1752. This nuftiber being badly received by the public, the further prosecution of the business seems to have been dropped. See some account of it in the Gentleman’s Mag. 1752, p. 46. It was proposed to have been finished by Christmas 1756, in ten quarto volumes, price nine guineas, the last two to contain upwards of six hundred plates. In 1772 he published, in 4to, “Calendars of the Ancient Charters, &c. and of the Welsh and Scottish Rolls now remaining in the Tower ofLondon, &c.” (which was begun to be printed by the late Rev. Mr. Morant), and in the introduction gives a most judicious and exact account-of our public records. He drew up the account of the ehapel of London-bridge, of which an engraving was published by Vertue, 1748, and again by the Society of Antiquaries, 1777. His historical description of the interview between Henry VIII. and Francis I. on the Champ de Drap d'Or, from an original painting at Windsor, and his account of the paintings of the same age at Cowdray, were inserted in the third volume of the Archaeologia, and printed separately, to accompany engravings of two of these pictures by the Society of Antiquaries, 1775. His account of the body of Edward I. as it appeared on opening his tomb, 1774, was printed in the same volume, p. 376. Having been educated, as has been observed, at Westminster, he acquired an early affection for that venerable cathedral and his intimate acquaintance witfi every part of it displayed itself in his accurate description of five monuments in the choir, engraved in 1779 by the same society; who must reckon, among the many obligations which they owe to his zeal and attention to their interests, the last exertions of his life to put their affairs on the most respectable and advantageous footing, on their removal to their new apartments in Somerset Place. He superintended the new edition of Leland’s Collectanea, in 9 vols. 8vo, 1770, and also of the Liber Niger Scaccarii, in 2 vols. 8vo, 1771, to each of which he added a valuable appendix to the latter the charters of Kingston-on-Thames, of which his father was recorder. He also revised through the press a new edition of Hearne’s “Curious Discourses,” 1771, 2 vols. 8vo and likewise the “Registrum Roffense,” published by Mr. Thorpe in 1769, folio. At the beginning of the seventh volume of Somers’s Tracts is advertised, “A Collection of Debates in Parliament before the Restoration, from Mss. by sir Joseph Ayloffe, bart.” which is supposed never to have appeared. In January 1734, he married Mrs. Margaret Railton (daughter and heiress of Thomas Railton, esq. of Carlisle, in the county of Cumberland, and relict of Thomas Railton, esq. who died in the commission of the peace for the city of Westminster, Sept. 4, 1732) and by this lady he had one son of his own name, who died of the small-pox, at Trinity hall, Cambridge, at the age of twentyone, Dec. 19, 1756. Sir Joseph died at his house at Kennington-lane, Lambeth, April 19, 1781, aged seventy-two; and was buried in a vault in Henclon church, with his father and his only son. His extensive knowledge of our national antiquities and municipal rights, and the agreeable manner in which he communicated it to his friends and tjie public, made him sincerely regretted hy all who had the pleasure of his acquaintance. Such of his Mss. as had not been claimed by his friends, were sold by auction, February 27, 1782.

, a Spanish statesman and writer, was born in 1731, at Barbanales, near Balbastro in Aragon. An early enthusiasm for the fine arts procured him the friendship of the celebrated artist Mengs, who was first painter to the king of Spain. After the death of Charles III. A zara constructed, in honour of his memory, a temple, in an antique form, in the church of St. James, which, although not faultless, discovered very considerable talents and taste in architecture. He was, however, soon employed in political concerns, and was sent to Rome, under the pontificate of Clement XIII. as ecclesiastical agent at the chancery of Rome. He was afterwards attached to the Spanish embassy, and took a very active part in various important negociations between the courts of Spain and Rome. In 1796 he was employed in a more difficult undertaking, to solicit the clemency of the conqueror of Italy in behalf of Rome, where the French nation had been insulted, and he at least acquired the esteem of general Buonaparte. About the same time he became acquainted with Joseph Bonaparte, then French ambassador at Rome. Being afterwards sent to Paris, in a diplomatic character, he was favourably received, and found some relief from the recollection that he had left behind him his valued friends, his fine library, and museum of paintings and antiques. During this mission he experienced alternate favour and disgrace, being recalled by his court, exiled to Barcelona, and sent again to Paris with the rank of ambassador. His health, however, was now much impaired, and when he was indulging the hope of being able to return to Italy, and pass the rest of his time in the enjoyment of his friends and favourite pursuits, his constitution suddenly gave way, and he expired January 26, 1797. He left a very considerable fortune in furniture, pictures, busts, &c. but appears to have lost his other property. He translated, 1. Middleton’s life of Cicero, and some fragments of Pliny and Seneca, under the title of “Historia della Vida di M. T. Ciceroni,” Madrid, 1790, 4 vols. 4to and also published, 2. “Introduzione alia storia naturale e alia Geografia fisica di Spagna,” Parma, 1784, 2 vols. 8vo. 3. “Opere di Antonio-Raffaele Mengs,” Parma, by Bodoni, 1780, 2 vols. 4to, of which a copious account may be seen in the Monthly Review, vol. LXV. 1781. This was afterwards translated into English, and published 1796, 2 vols. 8vo.

, an eminent Dutch painter, was born at Haerlem, Feb. 20, 1633, and at a very early age placed under the care of his uncle Piemans, who painted in the manner of Velvet Bruegfcel, and soon inspired his nephew with a taste for the art. Baan afterwards studied under Bakker at Amsterdam, with whom he practised assiduously every particular from which he could receive improvement, spending the whole day at the pencil, and the evenings in designing. At that time the works of Vandyck and Rembrandt were in great vogue, and after much consideration he appears td have leaned towards an imitation of Vandyck, whom, some thought, he equalled. Houbraken says he xvas invited by Charles II. to come to England, where he made portraits of the king, queen,- and principal nobility at court, and was much admired for the elegance of his attitudes, and for his clear, natural, and lively tone of colouring. After continuing some time in England, he went to the Hague, and there painted a noble portrait of the duke of Zell, for which he received a thousand Hungarian ducats, amounting to near 500l. He then painted for the, duke of Tuscany, who placed his portrait among those of other famous painters in the Florence gallery. When Louis XIV. was at Utrecht, he sent for him, but Baan declined the invitation for political reasons. This did not lessen him, however, in the opinion of that monarch, who frequently consulted him on the purchase of pictures. These, marks of distinction, and his fame as a painter, created him. many enemies, one of whom, an artist of Friesland, formed the execrable design of assassinating him, and came to Amsterdam for that purpose. After being long disappointed in an opportunity in the streets, he asked permission to see Baan’s paintings, and while the latter was showing them, drew a poignard to stab him, but a friend of Baan’s, who happened to enter the room at the instant, laid hold of his arm the villain, however, escaped, and could not afterwards be found. Baan was of an amiable disposition, Son­cial and obliging. He died at Amsterdam in 1702.

, surnamed the Painter, born at Genoa in 1639, went to Rome about his fourteenth year, where he placed himself with a dealer in pictures, at whose house he had frequent opportunities of seeing Bernini, of whom he received good advice in his art and assistance in his fortune. His first essays were the strokes of a masterly pencil, and he was thenceforward employed in capital works among others the cupola of Jesus at Rome, a grand and complicated performance, which it is impossible sufficiently to admire. But Bacici’s chief excellence lay in portrait-painting. He drew that of a man who had been dead twenty years. He began by chalking out a head from his own imagination then, retouching his work by little and little, according to the suggestions of those who had seen the person while alive, he at length succeeded in finishing a portrait acknowledged to be a Complete resemblance. Bacici painted with so much ease, that his hand in a considerable degree kept pace with the impetuosity Df his genius. His ideas were great and bold, sometimes fantastical his figures have an astonishing relief. He was a good colourist, and excellent in foreshortening, but he is reproached with incorrectness in his drawing, and a bad taste in his draperies. Nevertheless his works are much esteemed. He died in 1709.

, an eminent portrait and historical painter, was born at Harlingen, in 1609, but spent the greatest part of his life at Amsterdam and by all the writers on this subject, he is mentioned as an extraordinary painter, particularly of portraits, which he executed with strength, spirit, and a graceful resemblance. He was remarkable for an uncommon readiness of hand, and freedom of pencil and his incredible expedition in his manner of painting appeared in the portrait of a lady from Haerlem, that he painted at half-length, which was begun and finished in one day, though he adorned the figure with rich drapery, and several ornamental jewels. He also painted historical subjects with good success and in that style there is a fine picture of Cimon and Iphigenia, which is accounted by the connoisseurs an excellent performance. In designing academy figures, his expression was so just, and his outline so correct, that he obtained the prize from all his competitors and his works are still bought up at very high prices in the Low Countries. In the collection of the elector Palatine, there is an excellent head of Brouwer, painted by this master and in the Carmelites’ church at Antwerp is preserved a capital picture of the Last Judgment, which is well designed and coloured. Backer died at the age of 42, in 1651, but according to Descarnps, in 1641, at the age of 33.

, a painter, born at Antwerp in 1530, learned the principles of painting from his father, who was a much inferior artist. After his father’s death, he lived in the house of Jacomo Palermo, a dealer in pictures, who avariciously took care to keep him incessantly employed, and sent his paintings to Paris to be disposed of, where they were much admired. He had a clean light manner of pencilling, and a tint of colour that was extremely agreeable. The judicious were very eager to purchase them at high prices, of which, however, the poor artist was not suffered to avail himself; and although his merit was universally allowed, Palermo took care that his name and his circumstances should not be known. He died in this obscure and depressed condition in 1560, only 30 years old.

, a very celebrated Dutch painter, was born in 1631, in the city of Embden his father was secretary of state, and his grandfather had held a post in administration. The first sixteen years of his life were employed in studies suitable to the intentions of his family, which were to breed him up to commerce, and for that purpose he was sent to Amsterdam, where it would appear he first caught an inclination for painting. The earliest instructions he received in this art were from Albert Van Everdingen, but he acquired his principal know r Jedge by frequenting the painting-rooms of different great masters, and observing their various methods of touching and colouring. One of these masters was IJenry Dubbels, whose knowledge of his art was very extensive, and who was very communicative of what he knew. From him Backhuysen obtained more real benefit, than from all the painters of his time, and he had not availed himself long of such an instructor before he became the subject of general admiration, so that even his drawings were sought after, and one of his earliest performances was sold for one hundred florins. It was observed of him, that while he was painting, he would not suffer even his most intimate friends to have access to him, lest his fancy might be disturbed, and the ideas he had formed in his mind might be interrupted. He studied nature attentively in all her forms in gales, calms, storms, clouds, rocks, skies, lights and shadows and he expressed every subject with so sweet a pencil, and such transparence and lustre, as placed him above all the artists of his time in that style, except the younger Vandervelde. It was a frequent custom with Backhuysen whenever he could procure resolute mariners, to go out to sea in a storm, in order to store his mind with grand images, directly copied from nature, of such scenes as would have filled any other head and heart with terror and dismay and the moment he landed, he always impatiently ran to his palette, to secure those incidents of which the traces might, by delay, be obliterated. He perfectly understood ttie management of the chiaro-scuro, and strictly observed the truth of perspective. His works may be easily distinguished by an observant eye, from the freedom and neatness of his touch, from the clearness and natural agitation or quiescence of the water, from a peculiar tint in his clouds and skies, and also from the exact proportions of his ships, and the gracefulness of their positions.

For the burgomasters of Amsterdam he painted a picture, with a multitude of large vessels, and a view of the city at n distance, for which they gave him thirteen hundred guilders, and a considerable present. This picture they afterwards presented to the king of France, who placed it in the Louvre. No painter was ever more honoured by the visits of kings and princes than Backhuysen the king of Prussia was one of the number; and the czar Peter took delight to see him paint, and often endeavoured to draw, after vessels which he had designed. Backhuysen was remarkably assiduous and yet it seems astonishing to consider the number of pictures which he finished, and the exquisite manner in which they are painted. He is said to have had some taste for poetry, and such was his industry that at his leisure hours he taught writing in the families of the principal merchants. He was the greater part of his life much afflicted with the stone and gravel, yet reached a very advanced age, as his death did not happen till 1709. Strutt places him among his engravers, as having published some etchings of the Y, a small arm of the sea near Amsterdam.

, knight of the bath, and an excellent painter, was one of the sons of the lord-keeper sir Nicholas Bacon, and half-brother to the viscount St. Alban’s. He travelled into Italy, and studied painting there; but his manner and colouring approach nearer to the style of the Flemish school. Mr. Walpole observes, that at Culford, where he lived, are preserved some of his works and at Gorhambury, his father’s seat, is a large picture in oil by him, of a cook maid with dead fowls, admirably painted, with great nature, neatness, and lustre of colouring. In the same house is a whole length of him by himself, drawing on a paper his sword and pallet hung up, and a half length of his mother by him. At Redgrave-hall, in Suffolk, were two more pieces by the same hand, which afterwards passed into the possession of Mr. Rowland Holt the one, Ceres with fruit and flowers; the other, Hercules and the Hydra. In Tradescant’s museum was a small landscape, painted and given to him by sir Nathaniel Bacon. In the chancel of Culford, in Suffolk, are a monument and bust of him, with his pallet and pencils. Another monument was erected to his memory at Stiffkey in Norfolk, the inscription upon which is published by Mr. Masters. The same writer informs us, that sir Nathaniel was famed for painting plants, and well skilled in their virtues. He married first, Anne, the daughter of sir Thomas Greshant, and secondly, Dorothy, daughter of sir Arthur Hopton. By the former he had three daughters, the eldest of whom married John Townsend of llainham, ancestor of the present marquis Townsend. The monument above-mentioned was erected by himself in 1615, the 69th year of his age, but has not the date of his death.

, an eminent Italian painter, born at Parma, according to Basan, in 1581, was a disciple of Annibai Caracci, by whose admirable precepts he made an extraordinary progress in a short time, and proved the best designer of any of those who were educated with him in that illustrious school. He possessed a lively imagination, and a singular readiness of hand' and it was concluded by all who saw his performances, that he would have arrived at a high degree of merit, if he had not died in the very bloom of life, and if he had applied himself with more assiduity to his profession. Basan’s account, however, makes him reach his sixty-sixth year, but it does not appear on what authority. Badofocchi is to be ranked among engravers also, and there are many etchings by him, in a slight, free, masterly style. They are generally more finished than those of Guido but the extremities are by no means so finely drawn. Amongst the best, is Raphael’s Bible, from the pictures of Raphael in the Vatican, small plates, lengthways, engraved canjointly with Lanfranchi. This is a well-known work.

, an eminent French astronomer, was born in Paris, Sept. 25, 1736. His father was the fourth in succession of his family who followed the profession of a painter and young Bailly was also destined to painting, and had already made some progress in the art, when he showed a decided inclination for the study of the belles-lettres. Poetry was the first object that engaged his attention he even produced some tragedies which were praised by Lanoue, not however without advising his young friend to attend rather to science and Lacaille essentially contributed to direct his attention to the study of Natural Philosophy accordingly, in the year 1762, he presented to the academy “Observations on the Moon,” which Lacaille had made him draw up with all the particularity of detail required* by the new state of astronomy, and which were quoted by him with approbation, in the sixth volume of the Ephemerides.

, an eminent Butch, or perhaps rather Italian, painter, was born at Laeren, near Narden, in 1613. His name was Peter Van Laer, but in Italy they gave him the name of Bamboccio, on account, either of the uncommon shape of his body, the lower being one third longer than the upper, and his neck buried between his shoulders or, as Mr. Fuseli conjectures, he might acquire this name from the branch of painting in which he excelled for his usual subjects, the various sports of the populace, and transactions of vulgar life, harvest-homes, drolleries, hops, &c. are by the Italians comprised under the name of Bambocciate. Baldinucci seems to be of the same opinion, He had, however, an ample amends for the unseemliness of his limbs, in the superior beauties of a mind endowed xvith extensive powers of perception and imitation. He resided at Rome for sixteen years successively, and was held in the highest esteem by all ranks of men, as well as by those of his own profession, not only on account of his extraordinary abilities, but also for the amiable qualities of his mind.

Finding, at length, that it was impossible on the Continent to meet with that patronage which, with just ambition, he aspired to, he determined on returning to his native country from which, however, he was soon after again enticed, by very favourable prospects held out to him by the court of Russia, whither he repaired, taking with him the above-mentioned figure of Cupid, which was purchased by the empress Catherine, and placed in a temple constructed for the purpose in her gardens at Czarscozelo. After a residence of nearly two years, in a climate which proved very destructive to his health, an,d disappointed in his hopes, he returned to his family in England, there to wait the tide of favour, which was not long in turning its course towards him. In that branch which the profession of a sculptor chiefly embraces, that of monumental subjects, there is not so much scope for fancy and variety, as in the productions of an historical painter, but whenever an opportunity offered of deviating from the established rules usually adopted in these cases, our artist did not omit to avail himself of it, of which there is a striking instance in a monument to the memory of a daughter of sir Brooke Boothby, in Ashbourne church. The first great work which was to have been executed by Mr. Banks, on his return from Petersburg, was a colossal statue of Achilles bewailing the loss of Brise'is on the sea shore, for col. Johnes, of Hafod, in Cardiganshire but, as it was likely to be a work of immense labour and expence, other smaller things were undertaken for the same distinguished gentleman, some of which unfortunately perished in the conflagration which destroyed his unique abode of classic taste and elegance, in 1807. Various events afterwards combined to prevent the completion of this magnificent statue, in marble and since Mr. Banks’ s death, it has been presented, by his family, to the British institution in Pall Mall, where it forms a grand and simple ornament to the entrance-hall. The exterior of tnat building, which was originally the Shakspeare gallery, is also a specimen of our artist’s varied talents the whole front of it having been designed by him, as well as the beautiful groupe of figures over the entrance, which are allusive to its original destination. In the latter years of Mr. Banks’s career, his monument for sir Eyre Coote in Westminster abbey, and those in St. Paul’s to the memory of the captains (Hutt, Westcott, and Rundle Burges), who fell in some of our great naval victories, are the most conspicuous and, as they are within the reach of general observation, may be duly appreciated by persons of taste. Mr. Banks’ s election to be one of the members of the royal academy took place not long after after his return from Russia. On this occasion, he presented that body with a piece of sculpture, representing one of the fallen Titans, which is placed among the deposits in the council chamber of that institution, and is a striking example of the knowledge he possessed in anatomy, which enabled him to execute a subject of this nature with as much correctness and energy, as the elegance of his taste led him to represent tender and pathetic subjects with that peculiar delicacy and feeling which so eminently characterize his works.

, who was also surnamed Monnoyer, a painter of some note, who resided many years in England, was born at Lisle, in Flanders, in 1635. He was brought up at Antwerp, where his business was 'history painting but finding that his genius more strongly inclined him to the painting of flowers, he applied his talents, and in that branch became one of the greatest masters. When Le Brim had undertaken to paint the palace of Versailles, he employed Baptist to do the flower part, in which he displayed great excellence. The duke of Montague being then ambassador in France, and observing the merit of Baptist’s performances, invited him over into England, and employed him, in conjunction with La Fosse and Rousseau, to embellish Montague house, which is now the British museum and contains many of the finest productions of Baptist. “His pictures (says Mr. Pilkington in his Dictionary of Painters) are not so exquisitely finished as those of Van Huysum, but his composition and colouring are in a bolder style. His flowers have generally a remarkable freedom and looseness, as well in the disposition, as in pencilling together with a tone of colouring, that is lively, admirable, and nature itself. The disposition of his objects is surp'risingly elegant and beautiful and in that respect his compositions are easily known, and as easily distinguished from the performances of others.” A celebrated performance of this artist is a looking-glass preserved in Kensington palace, which he decorated with a garland of flowers, for queen Mary and it is mentioned as a remarkable circumstance, that her majesty sat by him during the greatest part of the time that he was employed ia painting it. He painted, for the duke of Ormond, six pictures of East India birds, after nature, which were in that nobleman’s collection at Kilkenny in Ireland, and afterwards came into the possession “of Mr. Pilkington. He died in Pall Mall, in the year 1699. There is a print of Baptist, from a painting of sir Godfrey Kneller, in Mr. Walpole’s” Anecdotes." He had a son, named Anthony Baptist, who also painted flowers and, in the style and manner of his father, had great merit. There was also another painter known by the name of John Baptist, whose surname was Caspars, and who was commonly called Lely’s Baptist. He was born at Antwerp, and was a disciple of Thomas Willebores Boschaert. During the civil war he came to England, and entered into the service of general Lambert; but after the restoration he was employed by sir Peter Lely, to paint the attitudes and draperies of his portraits. He was engaged in the same business under Riley and sir Godfrey Kneller. The portrait of Charles II. in Painters’ Hall, and another of the same prince, with mathematical instruments, in the hall of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, were painted by this Baptist, who died in 1691, and was buried at St. James’s.

, a late eminentFrench historical painter, was born in 1732, at Montbar, and died at Orleans October 6, 1809. His parents, who were not rich, sent him to Paris to be brought up to some trade; 'but his taste and genius guided him to the profession in which he lived to make a distinguished figure. In 1764, while a pupil of Lagrenee, he carried off the prize his subject on this occasion was, Tullia driving her chariot over the body of her father. He also made a beautiful design of the “Rape of the Sabines,” and others of “St. Charles Borromeo,” and the “Massacre of the Innocents.” He passed some time at Rome, and on his return to France, painted some pieces which fully established his reputation. Among these are “The Immaculate Conception,” “the Apotheosis of St. Theresa,” and “St Catherine disputing with the Doctors,” the merit of which last procured him admission into the royal academy of painting. In 1795, he was elected a corresponding member of the national institute, and was professor of design in the central school of the Loiret, which took the name of the Orleans Lyceum. His death was much regretted by his family, friends, and scholars.

, was an English artist of the last century, but known rather as a copyist than an original painter. He painted a picture of the celebrated Dr. Ward relieving his sick and lame patients, from which there is a print dated 1748-9, which appears to be the work of Baron. There is also a mezzotinto of admiral Vernon, from a picture by Bard well in 1744. At what time he died is not known, but it is probable that he was living in 1773, as a second edition of his treatise was published in that year. Whatever his merits as a painter, he certainly thought himself qualified to give instructions in the practical part of the art, and published a quarto pamphlet of sixty-four pages, entitled the “Practice of Painting and Perspective made easy,” 1756, which was elaborately but severely criticised in the Monthly Review. Mr. Edwards’s opinion is, that the instructions, so far as they relate to the process of painting, are the best that have yet been published, and many young artists at that time found them useful but the perspective of the work does not deserve equal praise, as no part is properly explained, and some of the figures are false. The principal part of Bard well’s pamphlet was re-published in 1795, 8vo. as an original publication.

, an eminent Italian artist, was born at Urbino, in 1528, and was the disciple of Battista Venetiano, by whom he was carefully instructed in the principles of painting, but he derived his knowledge of perspective from his uncle Bartolomeo Genga. Under those preceptors he practised assiduously, till he was in his twentieth year; and then visited Rome, where, under the patronage of cardinal della Rovere, he pursued his studies incessantly, and proved one of the most graceful painters of his time. At his return to his native city Urbino, he painted several pictures which procured him great applause; but that of a St. Margaret raised his reputation to the highest pitch, and induced pope Pius IV. to invite him to Home, where he employed him in the decorations of his palace of Belvedere, in conjunction with Federigo Zucchero. He excelled equally in history and portrait, but his genius inclined him more particularly to the painting of religious subjects; and his works sufficiently evince, that the utmost of his ambition was to imitate Correggio in his colouring, and Raphael in his manner of designing. But Correggio has somewhat so natural, so grand, so unaffectedly graceful, that Baroccio was far inferior to him, although perhaps more correct in the outlines. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who thought him, upon the whole, one of Correggio’s most successful imitators, says, that sometimes in endeavouring at cleanness or brilliancy of tint, he overshot the mark, and falls under the criticism that was made on an ancient painter, that his figures looked as if they fed upon roses. It is, however, singular to see colours of such variety coalesce so sweetly under his pencil, that perhaps no music reaches the ear with purer harmony, than his pictures the eye; an effect produced, in a great measure, by his attention to chiaroscuro, which he may be said to have introduced to the schools of Lower Italy, and which to obtain he rarely painted any historical figure without having either modelled it in wax, or placed some of his disciples in such attitudes as he wished to represent, it is sajd that when young, he was attempted to be poisoned at a dinner &ivc.5i by some of his rival artists, and that although he escaped with his life, he continued long in an infirm state. He must, however, have completely recovered from this attack, as his life was prolonged to the advanced age of eighty-four. He died at Urbino in 1612. Baroccio was also an engraver from some of his own compositions, and his plates, although slight, and not well managed, with respect to the mechanical part of the workmanship, are nevertheless most admirable, on account of the expression, and excellent drawing, which is discovered in them. His heads are very beautiful and characteristic; and the other extremities of his figures finely marked. Amidst all the difficulties he appears to have met with, in biting his plates with the aquafortis, after he had etched them, and his unskilfulness in handling-the graver, to harmonize and finish them, the hand of the master appears so evident, that the beauties we discover in them far overbalance the defects.

, an English landscape painter, was born about 1728, in the city of Dublin. It is not known that he received any regular instructions in painting. He began his attempts in the very humble line of colouring prints, in which he was employed by one Silcock, in Nicholas street, Dublin. From this feeble commencement he rose to considerable powers as a landscape painter, by studying from the scenes of nature in the Dargies, and in the park at Powerscourt, places near Dublin, and is said to have received patronage and encouragement from the noble owner of Powerscourt. About this time a premium was offered by the Dublin society for the best landscape in oil, which Mr. Barret won. In 1762 he visited London, where he soon distinguished himself; and, the second year after his arrival, gained the premium given by the society for the encouragement of arts, &c. for the best landscape in oil. The establishment of the royal academy was in a great measure indebted to the efforts of Mr. Barret, who formed the plan, and became one of its members.

He had two decided manners of painting, both with regard to colour and touch; his first was rather heavy in both, his latter much lighter. Scarcely any painter equalled him in his knowledge or characteristic execution of the detuils of nature. His attention was chiefly directed to the true colour of English scenery, its richness, dewy freshness, and that peculiar verdure, especially in the vernal months, which is so totally different from the colouring of those masters who have formed themselves on Italian scenery or Italian pictures. This strong desire sometimes tempted him to use colours rich and beautiful when first applied, but which no art could render permanent; which, in some of his slighter works, prevailed to such a degree as to leave scarcely any traces of the original colouring.

The best pictures in his first manner are to be found in the houses of the dukes of Buccleugh and Portland, c. &c. and those of his latter, in his great work, at Mr. Lock’s, at Norbury-park, Surrey, consisting of a large room painted with a continued scene entirely round. The idea in general characterizes the northern part of this country; and for composition, breadth of effect, truth of colour, and boldness of manner in the execution, has not been equalled by any modern painter. He exerted his powers to the utmost in this work, as he entertained the warmest sense of Mr. Lock’s great kindness and friendly patronage. He also painted in water-colours, in which he excelled.

As a man he was remarkably kind and friendly, gentle in manners, with a vast flow of spirits, even to playfulness, and a strong turn to wit and humour. For the last ten years of his life, he was obliged, on account of his health, to retire to Paddington, near London, where he painted (in conjunction with Mr. Gilpin, the celebrated animal-painter) some of his best easel-pictures. He died in March 1734, and was interred in Paddington church-yard, leaving a widow and nine children. In the latter part of his life he enjoyed the place of master painter to Chelsea hospital, an appointment conferred Oh him by Edmund Bnrke, esq. during his short administration. Barret left some etchings of his performances, the best of which is a view in the Dargles near Dublin. The plates of his etchings were purchased by Mr. Paul Sand by, but no impressions have been taken from them.

As Batoni was accustomed to contemplate nature in all her changes and motions, he had acquired a wonderful facility in tracing out even the most imperceptible features of the human face, which betray the frame of mind and the character of the man. The portraits he drew during the long course of his life are not to be numbered: he had drawn not only the popes Benedict XIV. Clement XIII. and Pius VI. but almost all the great personages who visited Rome in his time, at their own particular request. When the emperor Joseph II. was at Rome in 1770, and was unexpectedly met by his brother the grand duke of Tuscany in that city, he was desirous that this meeting should be eternized on canvas by the ablest painter that could be found in Rome, and the emperor pitched upon Batoni for this purpose. The picture, when finished, so highly satisfied him, that he not only amply rewarded the master, but likewise presented him with a golden chain, to which was suspended a irudal with his portrait, and a snuff-box of gold. The late empress, mother of the two monarchs, augmented these presents by giving him a series of large golden medals, on which their principal achievements were struck, and a ring richly set with brilliants; and honoured him with a letter, in which she demanded that the likeness of her sons, which terminated at the knees, should be completed. Batoni finished the work accordingly, as is seen with universal admiration in the large copper-plates designed by himself, and engraved by Andrea Rossi. As an additional honour, Batoni, with all his male issue, were raised by the emperor to the rank of nobility, and he received from the empress a fresh commission, to paint her deceased husband, the emperor Francis, after a portrait executed at Vienna. He also here fully answered the expectation of her majesty, and, besides a suitable recompense, he received likewise the portrait of the emperor Francis, set round with large brilliants.

Batoni' s habitation was not only the chief residence of the Genius of painting at Rome, but her sister Music dwelt there in equal state. His amiable daughter Rufina, who was at too early an age snatched away by death, was one of the completest judges of vocal music in all Italy; and no person of quality came to Rome, who was not equally desirous of seeing the paintings of Batoni, and of hearing his daughters sing. Among these were also the grand duke of Russia and his duchess. He here saw an unfinished portrait of a nobleman belonging to his suite, which pleased him so much, that he gave him orders to paint his own. But, as the departure of the illustrious travellers was so very near, he set his hand to the work on the spot. In the few moments that were delightfully employed by the imperial guest in hearing the songs of the painter’s daughter, the artist himself was busy in sketching his picture with so striking a likeness, that the grand duchess too spared so much time from her urgent affairs in the last days of her stay, as to have her picture drawn.

This high character of Ratoni, which we have considerably abridged from the last edition of this dictionary, was taken from Boni’s Eloge in a German Journal, and although we have endeavoured to keep down the enthusiasm of our predecessor, yet perhaps even now the article is disproportioned to the merit of the object, and to our scale of lives. It is therefore necessary to subjoin Mr. Fuseli’s opinion, which seems moderated by taste and judgment. Mr. Fuseli says, that Batoni “was not a very learned artist, nor did he supply his want of knowledge by deep reflection. His works do not bear the appearance of an attentive study of the antique, or of the works of Raphael and the other great masters of Italy: but nature seemed to have destined him for a painter, and he followed her impulse. He was not wanting either in his delineation of character, in accuracy, or in pleasing representation; and if he had not a grand conception, he at least knew how to describe well what he had conceived. He would have been, in any age, reckoned a very estimable painter; at the time in which he lived, he certainly shone conspicuously. His name is known throughout Europe, and his works are every where in estimation. Men^s, who was a more learned man, was his rival; but, less favoured by nature, if he enjoyed a higher reputation, he owed it less perhaps to any real superiority, than to the commendations of Winkelman.”

, an eminent painter, was born at Strasburg, in 1610, and was a disciple of Frederick Brendel. He had an enlarged capacity, -but the. liveliness of his imagination hindered him from studying nature, or the antique, in such a manner as to divest himself of his German taste, though he went to Rome to improve himself in the art. In Italy, he applied himself entirely to architecture, as far as it might contribute to the enrichment of his landscapes, which were his favourite subjects; and for his scenes and situations he studied after the rich prospects about Frascati and Tivoli, which could afford him the most delightful sites, views, and incidents. He was fond of introducing into his designs, battles, marchings of the army, skirmishes, and processions; but although he resided for a considerable length of time in and about Naples and Rome, he never arrived at a grandeur of design; nor could ever express the naked but indifferently. It must, however, be said in his commendation, that his pencil was light,his composition good, and his dispositions eminently picturesque. He painted with great success in water-colours on vellum, and etched the Metamorphoses of Ovid, and a great many other plates, from his own designs; his works were completed by Melc'hior Kussel, to the amount of five hundred prints, including those by his own hand. Of his engravings from the Metamorphoses, which are generally preferred to the rest, and consist of one hundred and fifty, Mr. Strutt says that the figures which are introduced are generally small, and very incorrect in the drawing; the back-grounds are dark and heavy, and the trees want that lightness and freedom which are necessary to render the effect agreeable. The pieces of architecture which he is very fond of introducing into his designs, appear to be well executed; and the perspective is finely preserved. In his manner of engraving he seems in some degree to have imitated Callot; and the nearer he approaches to the style of that master, the better are his productions. These designs manifest great marks of a superior genius, but without cultivation, or the advantage of a refined judgment to make a proper choice of the most beautiful objects. Argenville mentions a peculiarity of him, that when at work, he might be heard muttering in Spanish, Italian, or French, as if holding a conversation with the persons he was painting, and endeavouring to hit their characters, gestures, and habits. About 1638, he fixed his residence at Vienna, at the invitation of the emperor Ferdinand III. and there he married, but while happy in his family and in the patronage of the emperor, he was attacked by an illness which proved fatal in 1640, when he was only thirty years of age.

In 1719, Baxter published his Dictionary of the British Antiquities, under the title of “Glossarium Antiquitatum Britannicarum, sive Syllabus Etymologicus Antiquitatum veteris Britannise, atque Iberniso, temporibus Romanorum, &c.” dedicated to Dr. Mead, and with a fine head of the author by Vertue, from a picture by Highmore, when Baxter was in the sixty-ninth year of his age. The collectors will be glad to hear that in some of the earliest impressions, the painter’s name is spelt Hymore. This painting was done for a club-room, where Mr. Baxter presided, in the Old Jewry, but the landlord removing, took it with him, and it has never been heard of since. It is, perhaps, of more importance to add, that this work was published by the Rav. Moses Williams, who also, in 1726, published Baxter’s Glossary or Dictionary of the Roman Antiquities, under the title of “Reliquiae Baxterianae, sive W. Baxteri Opera Posthuma:” This goes no farther than the letter A, but has a fragment of the life of the author written by himself. His etymologies in this work are often correct and undeniable, but some are capricious. The reason of his declining to proceed farther than the first letter of the alphabet, was the reluctance of the booksellers to bear the expence of his Glossarium, which, however, he had the satisfaction of seeing published before his death, by the liberality of Dr. Mead. On the publication of the last mentioned work, Mr. Bowyer, the celebrated printer, whose memory has been so ably and so usefully preserved by his successor, published a small tract (included in his “Miscellaneous Tracts”) entitled “A Vii w of a book, entitled ‘ Reiiquiue Baxterianac,’ in a Letter to a f knrl.” Tr,is is a very acute and learned analysis oi the work mentioned, and gives us an amusing account of Baxter’s Life of himself, which is, in fact, an endeavour to trace his family He derives his name Baxter from the Saxon, Baker, for which reason he writes himself, from a word of the same signification in Welch, Popidius. We may also add, that to this day Baxter and Baker (the trade) are in most parts of Scotland synonymous. In this short pedigree, he speaks with the warmth of affection for his celebrated relative Richard Baxter. Alluding to the usual reproach passed on extempore preachers, he says, “Vir extemporanea dicenui facultate incredibili, zelo plane Apostolico (quern scurras nostronini temporurn cantum dicunt), &c.”

, a portrait-painter in the reign of Charles II. was daughter of Mr. Cradock, minister of Walton upon Thames, but was born in Suffolk in 1632. She was assiduous in copying the works of sir Peter Lely and Vandyke. She painted? in oil, water-colours, and crayons; and had much business. The author of the essay towards an English school of Painters, annexed to De Piles’s art of Painting, says, that “she was little inferior to any of her contemporaries, either for colouring, strength, force, or life; insomuch that sir Peter was greatly taken with her performances, as he would often acknowledge. She worked with a wonderful body of colours, and was exceedingly industrious.” She was greatly respected and encouraged by many of the most eminent among the clergy of that time; she took the portraits of Tillotson, Stillingfleet, Patrick, Wilkins, &c. some of which are still remaining at the earl of Ilchester’s, at Melbury, in Dorsetshire. In the manuscripts of Mr. Oldys, she is celebrated for her poetry as well as for her painting; and is styled “that masculine poet, as well as painter, the incomparable Mrs. Beale.” In Dr. S. Woodford’s translation of the Psalms, are two or three versions of particular psalms, by Mrs. Beale: whom, in his preface, he calls “an absolutely complete gentlewoman r” He says farther, “I have hardly obtained leave to honour this volume of mine with two or three versions, long since done by the truly virtuous Mrs. Mary Beale; among whose least accomplishments it is, that she has made painting and poetry, which in the fancies of others had only before a kind of likeness, in her own to be really the same. The reader, I hope, will pardon this public acknowledgement, which I make to so deserving a person.” She died Dec. 28, 1697, in her 66th year. She had two sons, who both exercised the art of painting some little time; one of them afterwards studied physic under Dr. Sydenham, and practised at Coventry, where he and his father died. There is an engraving, by Chambers, from a painting by herself, of Mrs. Beale, in Walpole’s Anecdotes of Painting in England.

, an engraver of Nuremberg, who flourished about the middle of the sixteenth century, was either instructed, or became an imitator of Henry Aldegrever, and Albert Durer, and like them, engraved on wood as well as copper, and also etched some few plates; but these last, by far the most indifferent, are also the smallest part of his works. If his style of engraving be not original, it is at least an excellent and spirited imitation of that which was adopted by the preceding masters of the country in which he resided. His pictures, for he was a painter, as well as his engravings, were held in such high estimation, that the poets of that age celebrated him in their poems, calling him in Latin, Bohemus. He was certainly a man of much genius, and possessed great fertility of invention. But the Gothic taste which so generally prevailed in Germany at this time, is much too prevalent in his works. His draperies are stiff, and loaded with a multiplicity of short, inelegant folds. His drawing of the naked figure, which he is fond of introducing, though mannered, is often very correct, and sometimes masterly. His heads, and the other extremities of his figures, are carefully determined, and often possess much merit. Of his numerous works, the following may be mentioned as specimens; on wood, a set of prints for a book entitled “Biblicae Histories artinciossissimce depictae,” Francfort, 1537; and on copper, “History of the creation and fall of man:” “The labours of Hercules:” “The virtues and vices,” &c. He had a brother, Bartholomew Beham, who resided principally at Rome. He was also an engraver, and from such of his prints as have been ascertained, which is somewhat difficult, he appears to have been a very excellent artist, and one of the superior scholars of Marc Antonio, whose style of engraving he imitated with great success. His drawing is correct and masterly; his beads are characteristic, and the other extremities of his figures well marked.

, a famous painter, born at Delft in the Netherlands, May 25, 1621, was trained under Van Dyke, and other celebrated masters. Skill in his profession, joined to politeness of manners, acquired him esteem in almost all the courts of Europe. He was in high favour with Charles I. king of England, and taught the principles of drawing to his sons, Charles and James. He was afterwards in the service of the kings of France and Denmark: he went next into the service of Christina queen of Sweden, who esteemed him very highly, gave him many rich presents, and made him first gentleman of her bedchamber. She sent him also to Italy, Spain, France, England, Denmark, and to all the courts of Germany, to take the portraits of the different kings and princes; and then presented each of them with their pictures. His manner of painting was extremely free and quick, so that king Charles I. told him one day, “he believed he could paint while he was riding post.” A very singular adventure happened to this painter, as he travelled through Germany, which seems not unworthy of being recited. He was suddenly and violently taken ill at the inn where he lodged, and was laid out as a corpse, seeming to all appearance quite dead. His valets expressed the strongest marks of grief for the loss of their master; and while they sat beside his bed, they drank very freely, by way of consolation. At last one of them, who grew much intoxicated, said to his companions, “Our master was fond of his glass while he was alive; and out of gratitude, let us give him a glass now he is dead.” As the rest of the servants assented to the proposal, he raised up the head of his master, and endeavoured to pour some of the liquor into his mouth. By the fragrance of the wine, or probably by a small quantity that imperceptibly got clown his throat, Bek opened his eyes; and the servant being excessively drunk, and forgetting that his master was considered as dead, compelled him to swallow what wine remained in the glass. The painter gradually revived, and by proper management and care recovered perfectly, and escaped an interment. How highly the works of this master were esteemed, may appear from the many marks of distinction and honour which were shewn him; for he received from different princes, as an acknowledgment of his singular merit, nine gold chains, and several medals of gold of a large size. The manner of his death is represented by the Dutch writers, as implying a reflection of his royal patroness the queen of Sweden. He was very desirous of returning to his native country, permission for which that princess refused, until having occasion herself to go to France, Bek had the courage to ask leave to go to Holland. She granted this on condition he should punctually return within a certain number of weeks; but he went away with a determination never to return. She wrote to him to come to Paris, but he gave her no answer, and remained at the Hague, where he died suddenly, Dec. 20, 1656, not without suspicion of poison, as the Dutch writers insinuate.

, a French poet, born in 1528, at Nogent le llotrtm, lived in the family of Renatus of Lorraine, marquis of Elbeuf, general of the French gallies, and attended him in his expedition to Italy in 1557. This prince highly esteemed Belleau for his courage; and having also a high opinion of his genius and abilities, entrusted him with the education of his son Charles of Lorraine. Belleau was one of the seven poets of his time, who were denominated the French Pleiades. He wrote several pieces, and translated the odes of Anacreon into the French language; but in this he is thought not to have preserved all the natural beauties of the original. His pastoral pieces are in greatest esteem, and were so successful, that Ronsard styled him the painter of nature. He wrote also an excellent poem on the nature and difference of precious stones, which by some has been reputed his best performance; and hence it was said of him, that he had erected for himself a monument of precious stones. Belleau died at Paris, March 6, 1577. His poems were collected and published at Rouen, 1604, 2 vols. 12mo, with the exception, we believe, of a macaronic poem he wrote and published (without date) entitled “Dictamen metrificum de bello Huguenotico.”

, a landscape painter, was born at Bamberg, April 1, 1745, and received the first instructions in his art from his father, John Christopher, who was painter to the court. He then went to Nuremberg, and studied the works of the best masters, some of whose styles, as in the trees of Waterloo, and the rocks of Berghem, Salvator Rosa, Meyer, &c. he imitated with considerable success. His favourite subjects were sea-views, tempests, fires, and sun-rising and setting, which were in much request in England. He died at Nuremberg, Nov. 26, 1796, without having been able to finish some pictures bespoke for England.

, also a landscape painter, and probably an ancestor of the preceding, was born at Utrecht in 1630, and was one of the best scholars of Herman Sachtleven, or Zaftleven. For improvement he afterwards visited Rome, and sketched every beautiful scene that occurred to him as he travelled in the neighbourhood of Rome, and particularly about Tivoli, by wnich means he furnished himself with excellent materials for his future compositions. He then settled at Nuremberg, where his principal works were long to be seen, and where he died Nov. 10, 1708. His colouring is lively and natural, if not sometimes a little too green; but his figures, and the boats, barges, and other vessels, which he always introduces on the rivers, or stationed near the banks, are well designed, and touched with spirit. His trees, indeed, are somewhat stiff and formal; but in general his pictures have a pleasing effect, as the distances are conducted with judgment, and every part handled in a masterly manner. The lights and shadows of his landscapes are distributed with singular skill; and his skies are usually clear, warm, and natural. His son John George, who died in 1723, was also an artist of some eminence, especially for his battle-pieces.

, a French artist, who practised in England, was born in France, in 1659, and at the age of fifteen was placed under the care of La Fosse, with whom his improvement was so considerable, that in three years he was qualified to be employed in one of the royal palaces. In 1681 he went to England, where he worked under Rambour, a French painter of architecture; and afterwards he was engaged in different works for several of the English nobility. The ceiling in the chapel of Trinity college, in Oxford, was painted by this master; he also painted the staircase at the duke of Schomberg’s in London, and the summer-house at Ranelagh. His drawings in the academy were much approved but towards the latter part of his life, he only painted small pieces in the historical style, for which the subjects were taken from fabulous history; -ind his last performance was a Bacchanalian, to which he affixed his name the very day before he died, in 1720.

When we reflect on the variety of books that bear his name, we cannot but be surprised at the extent and variety of the knowledge they contain. He was originally intended for a merchant; thence his knowledge of the principles of commerce. He was some years in one of the best disciplined armies in Europe thence his knowledge of the art of war. His translation of count Tessin’s Letters shew him to be well acquainted with the Swedish language, and that he is a good poet. His Pharmacopoeia Medici, &c. demonstrate his skill in his profession. His Outlines of Natural History, and his Botanical Lexicon, prove his knowledge in every branch of natural history. His First lines of Philosophical Chemistry have convinced the world of his intimate acquaintance with that science. His essay on Ways and Means proves him well acquainted with the system of taxation. All his writings prove him to have been a classical scholar, and it is known that the Italian, French, German, and Dutch languages were familiar to him. He was moreover a painter and played well, it is said, on various musical instruments. To these acquirements may be added, a considerable degree of mathematical knowledge, which he attained in the course of his military studies. An individual so universally informed as Dr, Berkenhout, is an extraordinary appearance in the republic of letters. In this character, which, we believe, was published in his life-time, there is the evident hand of a friend. Dr. Berkenhout, however, may be allowed to have been an ingenious and well-informed man, but as an author he ranks among the useful, rather than the original and the comparisons of his friends between him and the “admirable Chrichton” are, to say the least, highly injudicious.

, a Milanese painter, flourished about the year 1536. His Christian name is not known. Orlandi speaks of him by the name only of Bernazzano of Milan. His friend Cscsar de Sesta, the scholar of Leonard da Vinci, being a good painter of figures, but deficient in landscape, a branch in which Bernazzano excelled, they agreed to a partnership in their works. Among their numerous paintings is a “baptism of our Saviour,” in which Bernazzano painted some fruit so naturally that birds came and pecked at it. Such anecdotes are not uncommon in the history of painting, but generally to be received with caution. Lomazzo in his Trattato dell' arte della pittura," Milan, 1584, 4to, does not give the date of Bernazzano’s death.

, an eminent Spanish painter, sculptor, and architect, was born at Parades de Nava, near Valladolid. He went when young into Italy, studied under Michael Angelo, and became the friend and intimate of Andrea del Sarto, Baccio, Bandine*lli, and other celebrated artists. After having finished his education, he returned to Spain, and afforded eminent proofs of his talents in the Prado of Madrid, and the Alhambra of Grenada. The emperor Charles V. who admired his extensive and various talents, bestowed on him the order of knighthood, and appointed him gentleman of his chamber. After establishing a high reputation and a great fortune, Berruguete died at Madrid in 1545, advanced in years. In the cathedral of Toledo, is one of his finest sculptures, the Transfiguration, and some other beautiful carvings in the choir, one side of which was thus decorated by him, the other by Philip de Borgona. His style possessed much of the sublime manner of his great master, and he was justly admired by his countrymen, as being the first who introduced the true principles of the fine arts into Spain.

Besides the heads above named, he also executed some full length figures both of men and other animals, in a style of superior elegance. But that attention to the interests of a numerous family, which a man of sound principles, as Mr. Berry was, could never allow him to lose sight of, made him forego these amusing exertions, for the more lucrative, though less pleasing employment, of cutting heraldic seals, which may be said to have been his constant employment from morning to night, for forty years together, with an assiduity that has few examples in modern times. In this department, he was without dispute the first artist of his time but even here, that modesty which was so peculiarly his own, and that invariable desire to give full perfection to every thing he put out of his hands, prevented him from drawing such emoluments from his labours as they deserved. Of this the following anecdote will serve as an illustration, and as an additional testimony of his very great skill. A certain noble duke, when he succeeded to his estate, was desirous of having a seal cut with his arms, &.c. properly blazoned upon it. But as there were no less than thirty-two compartments in the shield, which was of necessity confined to a very small space, so as to leave room for the supporters, and other ornaments, within the compass of a seal of an ordinary size, he found it a matter of great difficulty to get it executed. Though a native of Scotland himself, the duke never expected to find a man of the first-rate eminence in Edinburgh but applied to the most eminent seal-engravers in London and Paris, all of whom declined it as a thing beyond their power. At this time Berry, of whom he had scarcely heard, was mentioned to him in such a manner that he went to him, accompanied by a friend, and found him, as usual, sitting at his wheel. Without introducing the duke, the gentleman showed Berry an impression of a seal that the duchess dowager had got cut a good many years before by a Jew in London, who was dead before the duke thought of his seal, and which had been shewn to the others as a pattern, asking him if he would ciu a seal the same with that. After examining it a little, Mr. Berry answered readily that he would. The duke, pleased and astonished at the same time, cried out, “Will you, indeed” Mr. Berry, who thought this implied some sort of doubt of his abilities, was a little piqued at it; and turning round to the duke, whom he had never seen before, nor knew; “Yes (said he,) sir; if I do not make a better seal than this, I shall take no payment for it.” The dukej highly pleased, left the pattern with Mr. Berry, and went away. The pattern seal contained, indeed, the various devices on the thirty-two compartments, distinctlyenough to be seen, but none of the colours were expressed. Mr. Berry, in a proper time, finished the seal; on which the figures were not only done with superior elegance, but the colours on every part so distinctly marked, that a painter could delineate the whole, or a herald blazon it, with the most perfect accuracy. For this extraordinary exertion of talents, he charged no more than thirty- two guineas, though the pattern seal had cost seventy-five. Thus it was, that, notwithstanding he possessed talents of the most superior kind, and assiduity almost unequalled, observing at all times a strict economy in his family, Mr. Berry died at last, in circumstances that were not affluent, on the 3d of June, 1783, in the 53d year of his age, leaving a numerous family of children. Besides his eminence as an artist, he was distinguished by the integrity of his moral character, and the strict principles of honour which on all occasions influenced his conduct.

, painter, and disciple of Jouvenet and de Boullogne the elder, was born at Paris in 1664. His father was a sculptor. The academy of painting decreed him the first prize at the age of eighteen, and admitted him afterwards of their number. During his stay at Rome he completed his studies. At his return to France he was appointed director of the Roman school but an affair of gallantry, which rendered it unsafe for him to return to Rome, prevented him from accepting that place. Louis XIV. and the electors of Mentz and of Bavaria employed him successively in various works. The last was desirous of attaching him to himself by handsome pensions but Berlin would never consent to quit his country. He died at Paris in 1736. His manner was vigorous and graceful; but his excellence lay chiefly in small pictures. At Paris there are several works of his in the church of St. Luke, the abbey of St. Germain des pres, and in the halls of the academy.

, called IL Frari, a painter and sculptor of Modena, has the reputation of having been the master of Corregio, but never arrived at the fame of his pupil. There is one of his pictures in the church of St. Francis in Modena, by which it appears that he possessed a certain degree of mellowness, though his line is too dry, and the eyes of his figures want the roundness of nature, like those of Cimabue. He died in 1510, two years before the merit of Corregio began to be acknowledged.

, painter and architect, was born at Boulogne in 1657. He studied the elements of his art under Cignani, a distinguished artist, and when this master produced his disciple to the world, his talents for architecture, for theatrical decorations, and for perspective, obtained him a good reception. The duke of Parma and the emperor gave him the title of their first painter, and loaded him with favours. Several magnificent edifices were raised after his plans. His pieces of perspective are full of taste, but there have not been wanting som critics who have censured him for having a pencil more fantastic than natural and just. He died blind in 1743, leaving two books of architecture and sons worthy of their father. It is probable that to one of them (J. Galli Bibbiena) the public is indebted for the “History of the amours of Valeria and the noble Venetian Barbarigo,” translated into French, Lausanne and Geneva, 1751. He had also a brother, an architectural painter of considerable fame.

, an ingenious artist, was born at Liere, in Brabant, in 1594, and at first learned the rudiments of the art from Wouter Abts, afterwards became the disciple of Rodolph Schoof, a painter of considerable reputation at that time at Paris, and when he had practised under that master for a sufficient time to form his hand, he sought to obtain still greater improvement by travelling to Rome and there he spent six years in studying the works of the best masters, devoting his whole time to his profession. His industry was then rewarded with proportionable success; for he found encouragement among the most honourable persons at Rome, and in every part of Italy. His penciling was so exceedingly neat, and his touch and colouring so very delicate, that he was frequently employed to paint on jasper, agate, porphyry, and other precious materials, His master-piece is St. Eloi, in the principal church at Liere. The time of his death is Mot known his son, Cornelius de Bie, wrote the lives of the painters, &c. under the title “Guide Cabinet, &c.” in Flemish verse, with their portraits.

The aspect of Dr. Black was comely and interesting. His countenance exhibited that pleasing expression of inward satisfaction, which, by giving ease to the beholder, never fails to please. His manner was unaffected and graceful. He was affable, and readily entered into conversation, whether serious or trivial. He was a stranger to none of the elegant accomplishments of life. He had a fine musical ear, with a voice which would obey it in the most perfect manner; for he sung and performed on the flute with great taste and feeling, and could sing a plain air at sight, which many instrumental performers cannot do. Without having studied drawing, he had acquired a considerable power of expressing with his pencil, and seemed in this respect to have the talents of a history painter. Figure, indeed, of every kind, attracted his attention. Even a retort, or a crucible, was to his eye an example of beauty or deformity. He had the strongest claim to the appellation of a man of propriety and correctness. Every thing was done in its proper season, and he ever seemed to have leisure in store. He loved society, and felt himself beloved in it; never did he lose a single friend, except by the stroke of death. His only apprehension was that of a long continued sick bed -less, perhaps, from any selfish feeling, than from the consideration of the trouble and distress which it would occasion to attending friends: and never was this generous wish more completely gratified. On the 26th Nov. 1799, and in the seventy-first year of his age, he expired without any convulsions, shock, or stupor, to announce or retard the approach of death. Being at table with his usual fare, some bread, a few prunes, and a measured quantity of milk diluted with water, and having the cup in his hand, when the last stroke of the pulse was to be given, he set it down on his knees, which were joined together, and kept it steady with his hand, in the manner of a person perfectly at ease; and in this attitude expired, without spilling a drop, and without a writhe in his countenance, as if an experiment had been required to shew to his friends the facility with which he departed. His servant opened the door to tell him that some one had left his name; but getting no answer, stepped about half-way towards him, and seeing him in that easy posture, supporting his bason of milk with one hand, he thought that he had dropt asleep, which sometimes happened after his meals. He went back and shut the door; but before he went down stairs, some anxiety, which he could not account for, made him return again, and look at his master. Even then he was satisfied after coming pretty near him, and turned to go away but returning again, and coming up close to him, he found him without life.

, an eminent painter, called the French Titian, was born at Paris in 1600. He learned the rudiments of his profession under his uncle Nicholas Bellori, but left him at twen'y years of age with an intention to travel to Italy. He stopped at Lyons in his way thither, where he staid for son e time; and during his residence here reaped both profit and amusement. He passed onto Rome, where he continued about two years. From thence he went to Venice, where he was so much pleased with the works of Titian, Tintoret, and Paul Veronese, that he resolved to follow their manner; and in this he succeeded so far, that at his return to Paris he soon got into high employment being generally esteemed for the novelty, beauty, and force of his pencil. He painted two galleries at Paris, one belonging to the first president, Perrault, and the other to monsieur de Bullion, superintendant of the finances. But his capital pieces are those in the church of Notre Dame, St. Andrew kneeling before the cross, and the Holy Ghost descending. Blanchard was in a likely way of making his fortune; but a fever and an imposthume in the lungs carried him off in his thirty-eighth year. Of all the French painters Blanchard was esteemed the best colourist, having studied this branch with great care in the Venetian school. There are few grand compositions of his; but what he has left of this kind shew him to have had great genius. He was mostly taken up with Madonnas, half-lengths, which prevented his employing himself in subjects of greater extent.

, a painter, born at Paris in 1617, the disciple and friend of Poussin and Albano, was appointed professor of painting by the academy of Paris, though absent, and therefore contrary to established custom; but Blanchet was accounted deserving of this departure from the rules. Le Brun presented his picture for reception, representing Cadmus killing a dragon. He spent a part of his life at Lyons, and there died in 1689. A ceiling at the town-house of that place, in which Blanchet displayed the whole force of his talents, was burnt by fire in 1674, and the rest of his works perished in the revolutionary destruction to which that city was doomed in 1793. This painter excelled in history and portraits. His touches are bold, agreeable, and easy, his drawing correct, and his colouring excellent. Several of his pictures were formerly at Paris.

, a painter of great abilities, was born at Alkmaar in 1628, and received his earliest instruction from Arent Tierling but afterwards he was successively the disciple of Peter Scheyenburg and Caesar Van Everdingen. When he had spent some years with those masters, he went to Rome, where, during his continuance in that city, he carefully copied the works of the best masters, and was admitted into the society of Flemish painters called Bentvogels, who gave him the name of Jan Maat (which in Dutch signifies mate or companion), and by that name he is most generally known. His subjects were landscapes, with views of rivers or sea-shores, havens or ports, which he executed with a light free pencil; and in the representation of storms and calms (as nature was always his model) he described those subjects with great truth, exactness, and neatness of handling. The pictures of this master which are most commended are the Italian sea-ports, with vessels lying before them. He possessed a lively imagination; nor was his hand less expeditious than his thoughts; and the connoisseurs agreed in opinion, that if he had bestowed more labour on his pictures than he usually did, so as to finish them more highly, he would certainly have destroyed a great deal of their spirit, force, and effect. His most capital performance is a view of the sea-shore, with the waves retiring at ebb tide; which is described by Houbraken as being wonderfully beautiful and natural. He died in 1670.

, a painter of history and landscape, was born at Bovine, near Dinant, in 1480. He acquired his skill in the art merely by the strength of his natural genius, assisted by a diligent study and observation of the works of Patenier, without having any other instructor: and at last rendered himself very eminent, particularly by his landscapes. His best performances were bought up by the emperor Rodolph, and they are still preserved at Vienna. His style of composition in historical subjects resembled the style of the Flemish artists of that age, and exhibited a great number of figures finished with extreme neatness. But he crowded several subjects into one design; as in his picture of the disciples at Emmaus, he represented not only that incident, but in different groupes disposed in the back ground, he represented likewise the different parts of the passion of our Saviour. And yet, notwithstanding the impropriety of that manner of composing, his pictures were so delicately pencilled and finished, and his landscapes in particular so agreeably invented, so full of variety, and well executed, that even in Italy his works were in great request, and were distinguished there by the appellation of the owl-pictures for he fixed an owl, as his peculiar mark, in every picture he painted by which the works of this master are always indisputably known. He died in 1550.

, painter of landscape, cattle, history, and portrait, was born at Gorcum in. 1564, according to Houbraken but according to Sandrart, whose authority seems to claim the preference, he' was born in 1567, and lived mostly at Utrecht. In his youth he applied himself diligently to design after the works of Francis Floris, and afterwards received instructions from several artists of no great repute; but the power of his own genius proved his principal director in the art of painting. He formed a manner peculiar to himself, making nature his model for many of the objects he painted, particularly his cattle, in which he excelled. He died in 1647. He left four sons, two of them, Henry and Adrian, were artists of considerable merit, but inferior to the youngest, the subject of the following article.

, was an artist of whose life we have very few particulars, till he was known at Rome, in the year 1716, being at that time painter to count Martinetz and his reputation, as a good painter of portrait in miniature, was well established in Italy. By the solicitation of Overbeke, he was induced to go to Amsterdam, and in that city was employed to paint small portraits for bracelets, rings, and snuff-boxes and although they were painted in water-colours, yet the colouring was as lively and as natural as if they had been painted in oil. However, as he found his sight much impaired by the minuteness of his work, he discontinued water-colour painting, and attempted the use of oil, with a reasonable degree of success. After he had resided for some years in the Low Countries, he went to England, and set up a new method of printing mezzotinto plates in colours so as to imitate the pictures of which they were copies. In this manner he executed in England several large plates, from pictures of the greatest masters, and disposed of the prints by lottery. But those who obtained the prizes (Mr. Strutt says) appear not to have held them in any very great estimation. “The prints,” he adds, “certainly possess some merit, exclusive of their novelty; but, in general, the colours are flat and dirty the effect is neither striking nor judiciously managed and the drawing is frequently very incorrect, especially in the extremities of his figures.” Mr. Pilkington speaks of them with greater approbation “The artist,” he says, “imitated his models with so much skill, such exact resemblance, such correctness of outline, such similarity of colour and expression, that at first they amazed every beholder who viewed them at a proper distance and many of those prints are still extant, which are much esteemed by persons of good taste.” And Mr. Wai pole observes, that some heads, coloured progressively, according to their several gradations, bear witness to the success and beauty of his invention. He had another merit to the public, with which few inventors begin; for he communicated his secret in a thin quarto, entitled “Coloritto, or the harmony of colouring in painting reduced to mechanical practice, under easy precepts and infallible rules.” His method was performed by several mezzotinto plates for one piece, each expressing different shades and parts of the piece in different colours. He was not, however, it is said, the original inventor of that manner of managing colours, but took it from Lastman and others, who, with, much greater regularity of morals, equal capacities, and more discreet conduct, had before undertaken it without success. Le Blond, whose head was continually full of schemes, next set on foot a project for copying the cartoons of Raphael in tapestry, and made drawings from the pictures for that purpose. Houses were built and looms erected at the Mulberry Ground at Chelsea but the expences being too great, or the contributions not equal to the first expectations, the scheme was suddenly defeated, and Le Blond disappeared, to the no small dissatisfaction of those who were engaged with him. From hence he went to Paris, where, Basan informs us, he was in the year 1737; and in that city he died, 1740, in an hospital. Le Blond was also author of a treatise, in French, on ideal beauty. It was published in 1732, and has since been translated into English.

, was a Flemish painter, whose works are not frequently seen in these kingdoms nor are they easily purchased in Holland, being carefully preserved in private collections, and very highly esteemed. The subjects he chose to paint were always taken from the lowest life such as boors drinking, feasting, dancing, or quarrelling shepherds piping, and sometimes the marriages of villagers. He was a faithful and indeed too servile an imitator of nature never departing from the actions, attitudes, or draperies of his models. He showed a good knowledge of the chiaro-scuro, and perspective he had a delicate manner of pencilling, and his colouring was mellow but he had no idea of elegance yet his pictures had in many respects great merit, and his defects seem rather imputable to the taste of his country than to his own genius some of his works being, for the lightness of the touch, the neatness of handling, and transparence of colour, equal to the best of his time. He died in 1667.

, called Clememtone from the vast size of his figure, a distinguished history and portrait painter, was born at Genoa in 1620, and was the disciple of Bernardo Strozzi, an artist of good reputation but he found in himself so strong an ambition to arrive at excellence in his profession, that he left Genoa, and went to Rome and Florence, where he became familiar with Castiglione, there to explore that true sublimity of style, which can only be obtained by a judicious observation of the ancient sculptures and the works of the celebrated modern artists. By the guidance of an excellent genius, and also by a most industrious application to design, he discovered the art of uniting and blending the antique and modern gusto in a style that at once exhibited both gracefulness and strength. His style is more correct and more ideal than that of his master, though inferior in truth of colour. Most of the works of this master (except his portraits, which were lively, natural, and graceful) are in the chapels of Genoa, Pisa, and other cities of Italy, but particularly in Pisa, where is the best of his works, a St. Sebastian in the Certosa.

, called also Langhen-Jan, a painter of history and portrait of the Flemish school, was born at Munster, about the year 1610; and removing to Flanders, acquired the art of design and colouring in the school of Jacques Jordaens. He designed well the heads erf his women are generally graceful, and those of his men distinguished by character: his tone of colouring sometimes resembled that of Rubens, but more frequently that of Vandyck. His pictures have great force and harmony, and his skilful management of the chiaro-scuro produces an agreeable effect. An altar-piece at the church of St. James in Ghent, representing the martyrdom of this saint, and a picture of the Annunciation in another church, painted in 1664, are distinguished performances of this master. Descamps mentions another John Van Bockhorst, who was born at Dentekoom in 1661, went when young to London, and was employed by sir Godfrey Kneller on his portraits, and the earl of Pembroke also employed him to paint portraits, history, and battle pieces. He afterwards practised portrait-painting in various parts of Germany, principally at the court of Brandeuburgh and in Cleves, and died in 1724.

In 1737 he was elected a member of the grand council of Zurich, but this excited no ambition. Having lost his children, he refused every kind of civil promotion, and took as much pains to avoid as others do to procure such honours. His object was to reform the taste of his country, and with this view, for many years all his writings were of the didactic and critical kind. In 1721 he and Breitinger made their first appearance in the republic of letters, by a periodical paper, in the manner of the English Spectator, to which they gave the title of the “Painter of Manners,” and which contributed in a very great degree to the reformation of style. This was followed by many other works, which procured Bodmer the high character of the restorer of the German language, criticism, and poetry. He published also various pieces relative to the history of Swisserland, the greater part of which appeared in the Helvetic Bibliotheque, and have since been inserted in the supplement of Lauffer’s history of Swisserland. In 1748 and 1758, he and his former colleague Breitinger re-published many pieces of German poetry of the thirteenth century: Bodmer also translated some old English ballads, and published the poetry of Opitz with critical remarks. All these contributed essentially to the refinement of German taste and style but Bodmer reached his fiftieth year before he became himself a poet. He had hitherto been terrified at the restraint which rhime imposes, and made no attempt of the kind, until Klopstock, by introducing hexameters, opened the way to ease and variety. Bodmer had studied Milton and Klopstock, and as he was the son of a clergyman, and once destined for the church, this, and a desire to tread in the steps of these illustrious predecessors, determined him to choose a subject from the Bible. Perhaps, says his biographer, his creative powers suggested to him the patriarchs instead of the Achilleses and Æncases. Hitherto his pen had not touched on a national subject, nor could he find any creative fund in national history. Animated therefore by the genius of Milton, he ventured to write an epic in an age in which the poetic fire appeared to be extinguished. His hero was Noah, who having survived the destruction of the first, became the father of a new race of men. Bodmer, by charging this new generation with the crimes of all ages, rendered his poem at once moral and political, and, under the title of the “Noachide,” it was printed at Zurich, 1752, 1765, and 1772.

, called sometimes Bolognese, from the place of his birth, flourished in the sixteenth century, and is better known as an engraver than as a painter. He is supposed, but without sufficient authority, to have been a scholar of Sabbatini. Some remaining oil-pictures of his, on canvas, which are, in general, weak, and of different styles, make it probable, says Lanzi, that he resolved to be a painter when he had passed youth. There is, however, in the church of St. Stephano, in Bologna, a Purgatory of his, which has great beauties, and is suspected to have been done with the assistance of Sabbatini. As an engraver, he worked from the pictures of Raphael, Julio Romano, and other great masters; and occasionally from his own designs. Mr. Strutt’s opinion is, that excepting one or two subjects, in which he called in the assistance of the point (the use of which, however, he never well understood), his plates are executed chiefly with the graver, in a manner though much varied from that of his tutor, Marc Antonio Raimondi, yet evidently founded upon it, although neither so firm, clear, or masterly. His drawing is often heavy, and the extremities of his figures frequently neglected; the folds of his draperies are seldom well expressed, and the back grounds to his prints, especially his landscapes, are extremely flat and stiff. However, with all these faults (which are not always equally conspicuous), his best prints possess an uncommon share of merit; and though not equal to those of his master, are deservedly held in no small degree of estimation by the greatest collectors. Bonasone has lately found an ingenious and able advocate in George Cumberland, esq. who, in 1793, published “Some Anecdotes” of his life, with a catalogue of his engravings, &c.

, a portrait-painter, was born at Dort, in 1669, and after having been for some time a disciple of Arnold Verbuis, placed himself under Godfrey Schalcken, who recommended to him, after having received his instructions for six years, to study nature. By following this advice, Boonen obtained the reputation of a great master at the age of twenty-five years. His style of colouring was extremely good; the attitudes of his figures were elegantly disposed; his touch neat. The whole possessed such harmony, and his portraits maintained such a striking likeness, that he was ranked among the ablest artists of his time; he had a number of admirers, and a greater demand for works than he was able to execute. He had the honour of painting the portraits of the czar of Muscovy, of Frederick I. king of Prussia, of the victorious duke of Marlborough, as well as of many of the princes of Germany, and most of the noblemen who attended the czar. His health was impaired by his excessive application, and he died rich in 1729.

a painter, engraver, and antiquary, was born at Brussels in 1583, but when in his third year, the war obliged his parents to remove into Germany. From his earliest years he discovered a taste for painting, which induced his father to place him under Giles Van Valkenberg. He afterwards studied in Italy, and travelling over Germany, settled first at Franhendal, and in 1627 at Francfort on the Maine. His paintings, principally fruit and flowers, were much admired, but he perhaps had more reputation as an antiquary, in which capacity, the earl of Arundel sent him into Italy to Mr. Petty, who was then collecting for his lordship, and retained him in his service as long as he lived. After the death of this patron, Vander Borcht was employed by the prince of Wales (afterwards Charles II.) and lived in esteem at London several years, till he returned to Antwerp, where he died in 1660. As an engraver we have some few etchings by him; among the rest the “Virgin and Child,” a small upright print, from Parmigiano, engraved at London in 1637; a “Dead Christ, supported by Joseph of Arimathea,” from the same master, and “Apollo and Cupid,” a small upright oval from Perin del Vago.

, a painter and engraver, was born at Rome, in 1630, and learned design from Giulio Borgianni his brother; but improved himself by studying the capital performances of the ancient and modern artists, which he was enabled to contemplate every day in his native city. Having had an offer from a nobleman, of travelling with him in a tour through Europe, he willingly accepted it, from a desire of being acquainted with the different customs and manners of different nations. But his progress was stopped by his falling in love with a young woman in Spain, to whom he was afterwards married; and finding his circumstances reduced to a narrow compass, he applied himself to his profession with double diligence, to procure a comfortable support. His endeavours were soon successful; and he was happy enough to find many friends, admirers, and employers, and was accounted one of the best painters in Spain. After the death of his wife, having then no attachment to that country, he returned to Rome, and painted some historical subjects larger than life; but the figures being above his accustomed size, shewed a want of correctness in several of the, members, which made his pictures not quite acceptable to the refined taste of the Roman school. He was, however, engaged in some great works for the chapels and convents, and also to paint portraits, by which he acquired honour, and lived in affluence. He died in 1681, of a broken heart, in consequence of the ill treatment he received, through the envy and villainy of one Celio, a painter, who proved a most malicious competitor, and to whom he had been often preferred, by the best judges of painting at Rome; but he died lamented and pitied by every worthy man of his profession. As an engraver, he is probably best known to many of our readers, for his engravings of the Bible histories, which were painted by Raphael in the Vatican, commonly called “Raphael’s Bible,” small plates, length-ways, dated 1615, which are very slight, and seem to be the hasty productions of his point. Mr. Strutt says, that his most finished etching is “a dead Christ,” a small square plate, the figure greatly foreshortened, and behind appear the two Mary’s and St. John, who is kissing one of the hands of our Saviour. His etchings are, in general, in a bold, free manner, and more finished than usual, when considered as the works of a painter, but in some the drawing is not correct.

, an artist of singular taste, was born at Bois-le-Duc. He seemed to have a peculiar pleasure in painting spectres, devils, and enchantments: and although he possessed considerable powers as a painter, both in freedom of touch and strength of colouring, his pictures rather excite a horror mixed with admiration than any degree of real delight. Among the singular objects which he chose, there is one which represents the Saviour delivering the Patriarchs from hell. The fire and flames are painted with great truth. Judas in the attempt of slyly escaping with the Saints, is seized in the neck by the devils, who are going to hang him up in the air. A most remarkable painting of this master’s hand, among several others in the Escurial, is an allegory of the pleasures of the flesh: in which he represents the principal figure in a carriage drawn by monstrous imaginary forms, preceded by demons, and roll owed by death. As to his manner, it was less still than tnat of most of the painters of his time; and his draperies were in a better taste, more simple, and with less sameness, than any of his contemporaries. He painted on a white ground, which he so managed as to give a degree of transparence to his colours, and the appearance of more warmth. He laid on his colours lightly, and so placed them, even at the first touch of his pencil, as to give them their proper effect, without disturbing them: and his touch was full of spirit. Bos was also an engraver, and, as Strutt thinks, the first artist who attempted to engrave in the grotesque style. His engravings have that stiffness which so strongly characterises the works of the early German masters, and prove that he possessed a great fertility of invention, though perhaps but little judgment. He died in 1500.

, an historical painter, was born at Florence, in 1553, and educated under Santi di Titi. He was the first person who had a just notion of the chiaro scuro, and used it successfully in the Florentine school; where, though it had been happily practised by Giorgione, at Venice, and also by Titian, it was not well understood before his time. He possessed great freedom of hand, and gave a surprising force of colour; and both in design and composition the grandeur of his style resembled that of his master. He studied after nature; and in his travels he drew sketches of any particular objects that struck him; but pursuing this practice at Loretto, with regard to the fortifications of the city, he was seized by the officers of justice, and condemned to be hanged; but he happily escaped, within a few hours of execution, by the interposition of signior Bandini, who explained to the chief magistrate his innocent intention. He was also an engraver; but the subjects of his plates are not specified either by Marolles or Florent le Comte. He died in 1606.

Descamps, in the life of Both, after having said that John painted landscapes, and Andrew figures, in the manner of Bamboccio, asserts that Andrew was drowned in a canal at Venice, and John returned to Utrecht; in which account he appears to follow Sandrart; though other writers agree, that it was the landscape-painter who was drowned, and Andrew, returning to his own country, painted conversations and portraits as long as he lived, of which the other was incapable. The two brothers mutually assisted each other till the death of John in 1650; and then Andrew retired from Italy, settled at Utrecht, and continued to paint sometimes portraits, sometimes landscapes, in the manner of his brother, and also conversations, and players at cards, in the manner of Bamboccio. Both of those masters had extraordinary readiness of hand, and a free, light, sweet pencil; and that they were expeditious, may be evident from the great number of pictures which they finished. Andrew, during the remainder of his life, had as much employment as he could possibly execute; but was so affected by the melancholy death of his brother, that he survived him only a few years, dying in 1656. Strutt mentions a few engravings by both these artists, but neither arrived at any great perfection in the art.

an Italian painter and engraver, was born at Florence, in 1437; and being placed as a disciple with Filippo Lippi, he imitated that master, as well in his design as colouring. He performed several considerable works at Florence, and several at Rome, by which he gained great reputation; at the former, a Venus rising from the sea, and also a Venus adorned by the graces; and at the latter, he painted sacred subjects from the New Testament, which at that time were very much commended. He obtained great honour by his performances in the chapel of Sixtus IV. for which he was very amply rewarded; and for the family of the Medici he finished some portraits, and many historical compositions. It was customary with this master to introduce a great number of figures in all the subjects he designed, and he disposed them with tolerable judgment and propriety; but in one of his designs, representing the Adoration of the Magi, the variety and multitude of his figures are astonishing. He received large sums of money for his works, all of which he expended, and died in 1515 in great distress, and far advanced in years.

, first painter to Louis XV. was born at Paris in 17u6, and was educated under Le Moine, after which he studied at Rome. On his return to Paris, he employed himself on every species of the art, but especially in the light and agreeable. His Infant Jesus sleeping, is finely coloured, and designed with a most flowing contour. The Shepherd asleep on the knees of his shepherdess, is a little landscape of singular merit. Many of his other landscapes are peculiarly happy. His other most noted pieces are pastorals for the manufacture of tapestry, at Beauvais; the muses in the king’s library; the four seasons, in the figure of infants, for the ceiling of the council-room at Fontainbleau; a hunt of tigers, &c. He was usually called the painter of the graces, and the Anacreon of painting; but his works did not justify these high encomiums, and seem to have rather sunk in the estimation of his countrymen. He died of premature old age in 1770.

There was another John Boulanger, a painter, who was born in 1606, and died in 1660. Mr. Fuseli informs us that he was a pupil of Guido, became painter to the court of Modena, and master of a school of art in that city. What remains of his delicate pencil in the ducal palace, proves the felicity of his invention, the vivid harmony of his colour, and in the attitudes a spirit bordering on enthusiasm. Such is the Sacrifice (if it be his, as fame asserts) of Iphigenia; though the person of Agamemnon is veiled in a manner too whimsical to be admitted in a heroic subject. Of his scholars, Tomaso Costa of Sassuolo, and Sigismondo Caula a Modenese, excelled the rest. Costa, a vigorous colourist, laid his hand indiscriminately ori every subject of art, greatly employed at Reggio, his usual residence, and much at Modena, where he painted the cupola of S. Vicenzo. Caula left his home only to improve himself at Venice, and returned with a copious and welltoned style bat sunk to a more languid one as he advanced in life.

, the elder, painter to the king, and professor in the French academy, was born at Paris in 1609, and was principally distinguished for his ability in copying the works of the most famous ancient painters, which he did with astonishing fidelity. Tbere are also in the church of Notre Dame at Paris three pictures of his own of considerable merit. He died at Paris in 1674, leaving the two following sons:

, a very celebrated French painter, was born at Montpellier in 1616. His father, who was a glass-painter, gave him the first instructions in his art. When only seven years old, one of his uncles brought him to Paris, and placed him with a very indifferent painter, whose defects, however, were supplied by young Bourdon’s natural genius. Returning to Bourdeaux at the age of fourteen, he painted the cieling of a neighbouring chateau, and then went to Toulouse. Finding here no employment, he went into the army; but his captain, a man of some taste, judging that he would one day excel in his profession as an artist, gave him his discharge. He was eighteen when he went to Italy, and became acquainted with Claude Lorrain, whose manner, as well as that of Saccbi, Caravagio, and Bamboccio, he imitated with great success. After a residence of three years here, he happened to have a difference with a painter, who threatened to inform against him as a Calvinist, and Bourdon immediately set out for Venice, and thence to France. At the age of twenty-seven he painted his famous Crucifixion of St. Peter for the church of Notre Dame at Paris, which could not fail to raise his reputation. Du Guernier, a miniature painter, much employed at court, and whose sister he married, assisted him with his advice, and procured him work. But the civil wars interrupting the progress of the fine arts, in 1652 he went to Sweden, where queen Christina appointed him her first painter. While employed on many works for her, chiefly portraits, she mentioned to him one day some pictures which the king her father had found when he took Prague; these had till now remained unpacked, and she desired Bourdon to examine them. Bourdon reported favourably of them, particularly of some by Corregio, on which the queen requested he would accept them as a present from her. Bourdon, with corresponding liberality and disinterestedness, represented that they were some of the finest paintings in Europe, and that her majesty ought never to part with them, as a fit collection for a crowned head. The queen accordingly kept them, and took them with her to Rome when she abdicated the throne. After her death, the heirs of Don Livio Odeschalchi, who had purchased them, sold them to the regent duke of Orleans; and they afterwards made part of the fine collection known in this country by the name of the Orleans Collection.

Bourdon, however, not finding much exercise for his genius in Sweden, and the queen having become Roman catholic after her abdication, he returned to France, then more favourable to the arts, and soon had abundance of employment. Among his first performances after his return, were a “Dead Christ,” and the “Woman taken in adultery.” Some business occasioning him to go to Montpellier, during his short stay there he painted several portraits of persons of fashion. An anecdote is told, that, when in this place, a taylor who had a great esteem for him, and knew he was not rich, sent to him, by the hand of one Francis, a painter, a complete suit of clothes, cloak, and bonnet. Bourdon, in return, sent him his portrait dressed in this suit; but Francis, thinking it a very fine specimen of the art, presented the taylor with a copy, and kept the original. In 1663 he returned to Paris, where he continued to execute many fine pictures, until his death in 1671.

, knight of the Polish order of Merit, and an artist of distinguished reputation, was the descendant of a considerable family in Switzerland, but was born in London in 1756. His early destination was the army, under the patronage of lord Heathfield, who was his father’s - friend but having been instructedwhi|p a child in the rudiments of painting, by a foreigner of inconsiderable merit as a horse-painter, he became so attached to the study, as soon to relinquish the military profession, and devote himself wholly to the pencil. For this purpose he was placed under the tuition of Loutherbourg, and having, from his connexions and acquaintance, access to many of the most distinguished collections, he soon acquired considerable reputation by his landscapes and sea-pieces. In 1776, he travelled through Italy, France, and Holland, where his correct knowledge of the language of each country, added to the politeness of his address, and the pleasures of his conversation, procured him an introduction to the best society, and most valuable repositories of the arts on the continent. At his return to England, he exhibited several specimens of his studies at the royal academy, which obtained him reputation and patronage. In 1791 he was appointed painter to the king of Poland, whose brother, the prince primate, had been much pleased with his performances during his residence in this country; and at the same time he received the honour of knighthood of the order of Merit, which was afterwards confirmed by his present majesty, who, in 1794, appointed him landscapepainter to the king. Previous to this he had, in 1792, been elected a member of the royal academy. Some time before his death, by the will of the late Noel Desenfans, esq. an eminent picture-dealer, he became possessed of sufficient property to render a laborious application to his profession no longer necessary, and from that time he lived in the circle of his friends, highly respected for his talents and agreeable manners. He died Jan. 8, 1811, at his house in Portland- street, bequeathing his fine collection of pictures, and his fortune, to Dirlwich college. According to the terms of his will, he leaves the whole of these pictures, besides 10,000l. to keep them in due preservation, and 2,000/ for the purpose of repairing the gallery ki the college for their reception. He also bequeathed legacies of lOOOl. each to the master of the college, and to the chaplain and the fellows of the college are to be the residuary legatees, and are to possess, for its advantage, all the rest of his property, of every denomination. Most part of this will, however, does not take effect until after the death of Mrs. Desenfans, the widow of his benefactor; and after that event he directs that the body of the late Noel Desenfans, which is now deposited in a sarcophagus within a mausoleum in a chapel, attached to his late house in Charlotte-street, Portland-place, shall be removed, together with his own body (which has, by his desire, been deposited in the same mausoleum), and entombed in a sarcophagus, to be "placed in the chapel of Dulwich college. So singular a will, with respect at least to the place chosen for this collection, excited much surprise. The following circumstances, however, which have been communicated by an intimate friend of the testator, may in some measure account for it. After sir Francis became possessed of the Desenfans collection, by the owner’s friendly will in his favour, he wished to purchase the fee simple of his fine house in Charlotte-street, enlarge it, and endow it as a perpetual repository for the collection, easily accessible to the public, and particularly to students as a school of art; but unluckily, his landlord, a nobleman lately deceased, refused his consent, although he afterwards expressed an inclination to grant it, when too late. Sir Francis then conceived the design of hequeathing the collection to the British Museum, but did not execute it, from a fear that the pictures might not be kept entire and unmixed, he being told that it was in the power of the trustees to dispose of what might appear superfluous or inferior. Such was his respect for his deceased friend, that his only ambition was to discover a place where the collection might be kept together, and known in perpetuum, not as his, but as the Desenfans Collection. By whom Dulwich college, an hospital for poor men and women, remote from the residence of artists and men of taste, was suggested, we know not. It was a place sir Francis had probably never before seen; but, having once visited it, and been informed that his terms might be complied with there, without risk of alteration, he disposed of his property as we have related.

Having been so successful in promoting the art of engraving in this country, he resolved to direct his next efforts to the establishing an English school of historical painting; and justly conceiving that no subject could be more appropriate for such a national attempt than England’s inspired poet, and great painter of nature, Shakspeare, he projected, and just lived to see completed, a most splendid edition of the works of that author, illustrated by engravings from paintings of the first artists that the country could furnish, and of which the expence was prodigious. These paintings afterwards formed what was termed “The Shakspeare gallery,” in Pall Mall; and we believe there are few individuals possessed of the least taste, or even curiosity, who have not inspected and been delighted by them.

, or Donato Lazzari, but celebrated under the former name, a painter and architect, was born at Castel Durante, in the territory of Urbino, irv 1444, and at Urbino studied the works of Fra Carnevale, er Corradini. His fame as an architect has nearly obliterated his memory as a painter, though many of his works remain at Milan and its district, and are repeatedly mentioned by Cesariani and Lomazzo, who observe that his style on the whole resembled that of Andrea Mantegna. He painted portraits, sacred and profane history, in distemper and in fresco. He too, like Mantegna, studied much after casts, thence perhaps the too salient lights of his flesh. Like him, he draped models in paper or glued linen, to avoid stiffness. Lomazzo, who cleaned one of his pictures in distemper, found that, like Mantegna, he made use of a viscous liquid. The public frescoes of Bramante at Milan, mentioned by Lomazzo and Scaramuccia, are either no more, or spoiled; but a considerable number of private ones still remain in certain apartments of the palaces Borri and CastiglionL In the Certosa of Pavia there is likewise a chapel said to have been painted by him: the proportions are square, and rather heavy; the faces full, the aged heads grand; the colour vivid and salient, not without some crudity. The same style prevails in a picture of his belonging to the Melzi family, representing several saints and a beautiful perspective; it recurs again in an altar-piece of the Incoronata at Lodi, a charming temple built from the design of Bramante, by Gio. Bataggio, a native of the place; but his master-piece at Milan is at the church of S. Sebastian, the patron saint, in whose style no trace of Quattrocento appears.

, a Flemish historical painter, was born at Delft, in 1596, and acquired the art of painting in the school of Rembrandt, whose manner in small he imitated. At the age of 18 years he went to Rome for further improvement, but could never wholly divest himself of the Flemish style. With a fine taste of design he combined an expression generally good, and occasionally noble. His pencil is delicate, and his colouring very peculiar in Che tints, and by great skill in the management of the chiaro-scuro, light, bold, and full of lustre, particularly in the vases, which he was fond of introducing, and to which he gave a rich and fine relievo. To his pictures he was accustomed to give a great degree of transparence, by painting witk a very thin body of colour, especially in the brown and shadowy parts. His name was famous, not only at Rome, but in several other cities of Italy, anu his works, but of Italy, are scarce but when“they occur in an undamaged state, they fetch high prices. Among his most capital pictures are the” Raising of Lazarus,“exhibiting a charming contrast of light and shadow; his” Denial of St. Peter,“both executed in his best manner, and preserved at Rome; and particularly a small picture on copper, representing the” Story of Pyramus and Thisbe."

, a painter of portrait and history, was born at Prague, in 1660; and having spent about four years in the school of John Schroeter, principal painter at that court, a kind of jealousy of his rising merit was excited in the mind of his master, which Brandel resented, and removed from him; and at the age of about iy years, commenced a master himself. Schroeter’s jealousy is thus accounted for by one of Brandel’s biographers. When in the fourth year of his apprenticeship, he was ordered 'to paint an altar-piece, which having executed in one day, he devoted the remainder of the time allowed to his pleasures, and when his master upbraided him with this apparent negligence of his orders, he produced the picture, which excited in Schroeter equal jealousy and astonishment. Most of the churches at Prague and Breslau are embellished with his works; and the prince of Hazfeld is said to have given 100 ducats for one picture of St. Jerome at half length. He spent most of his time at Prague, where the wealth which he acquired was dissipated by profusion and irregular conduct so that he died poor, in 1739, and was buried by charitable contributions. The Jesuits and monks, however, honoured his memory by appointing for him a solemn funeral procession, in which 300 tapers of wax were carried by ecclesiastics. Brandel was distinguished by a ready invention, an expeditious manner of painting, and natural colouring, except that his shadows were sometimes too black. His pencil was broad, easy, and free.

, a painter, was born at Poli, not far from Rome, in 1633, and studied in the school of Lanfranc. The greater part of the churches and palaces at Rome were embellished by his pencil. His best pictures arc his “St. Rocco,” in the church of Ripatta, and the “Forty Martyrs” in the Stigmata. An imagination full of fire, a great facility, a feeble and incorrect colouring, characterise his performances. He worked with uncommon rapidity, always preferring his pleasures and money to fame. He died at Rome in 1691, aged 58, prince of the academy of St. Luc, and chevalier of the order of Christ. His daughter was married to the celebrated Rosa da Tivoli, of whom Giacinto conceived a mean opinion, because he painted only beasts. By this contemptuous behaviour Rosa was so incensed, that he collected all the clothes belonging to his bride, on the morning after marriage, and sent them back to her father with a message, “that his daughter’s person was fortune enough to make her husband happy; and that a good painter of beasts was as likely to become rich, as a bad painter of men.”

, considered in the Helvetic school as an artist of the first rank, was born at Basil, in 1661. He acquired the knowledge of design by studying and copying some good punis which were in the possession of his father; and from the appearapce of his having a strong natural talent, he was placed as a disciple with Caspar Meyer. When he quitted Basil, he went to Paris, and had the good fortune to be received into the school of Le Brun and the variety of works in which that eminent master was employed, proved an excellent means of instruction to the young artist. He so pleased Le Brun by the progress he made, that he was intrusted with several designs, under the immediate inspection of that great painter; but the particular respect and preference shewn by the master to the disciple, excited the envy and jealousy of others to such a degree, as might have been attended with unhappy consequences, if Brandmulier had not retired to his own country; though not before he had obtained the prize in the royal academy at Paris. He excelled in history and portrait, and his genius resembled that of Le Brun; his subjects being full of fire, and treated with elevation and grandeur. His design is correct, and his expression animated and just. He had a good method of colouring, laying on each mass in so proper a manner as to avoid breaking or torturing his tints; which made his colours retain their original beauty and strength without fading. He was fond of painting portraits in an historical style, and was generally commended for the resemblance of the persons who were his mpdels, and the agreeable taste in his compositions. He died in 1691, aged only thirty.

, whom Warton calls one of the minor pastoral poets of the reign of James I. was the second son of Thomas Brathwaite, of Warcop, near Appleby, in Westmoreland, descended of a respectable family. He was born in 1588, and at the age of sixteen became a commoner of Oriel-college, Oxford, being matriculated as a gentleman’s son, and a native of Westmoreland. While he continued in that college, which was at least three years, Wood informs us, that “he avoided as much as he could the rough paths of logic and philosophy, and traced those smooth ones of poetry and Roman history, in which, at length, he did excel.” He afterwards removed to Cambridge, where he spent some time “for the sake of dead and living authors,” and then going into the north, his father gave him the estate of Barnside, where he lived many years, having a commission in the militia, and being appointed deputylieutenant in the county of Westmoreland, and a justice of peace. In his latter days he removed to Appleton, near Richmond, in Yorkshire, where he died May 4, 1673, and was buried in the parish church of Catterick, near that place, leaving behind him, says Wood, the character of a “well-bred gentleman, and a good neighbour.” Wood has enumerated as his publications: 1. “Golden Fleece, with other poems,” Lond. 1611, 8vo. 2. “The Poet’s Willow, or the passionate shepherd,” ibid. 1614, 8vo. 3. “The Prodigal’s Tears, or his farewell to vanity,” 1614, 8vo. 4. “The Scholar’s Medley, or an intermixt discourse upon historical and poetical relations, &c.” 1614, 4to. 5. “Essays upon the Five Senses,” 1620, 8vo, 1635, 12mo. 6. “Nature’s Embassy, or the wild man’s measures, danced naked by twelve Satyrs,” 1621, 8vo. To these are added, Divine and moral essays, Shepherds’ tales, Odes, &c. 7. “Time’s curtain drawn: divers poems,” 1621, 8vo. 8. “The English Gentleman,” 1630, 1633, 1641, 4to. 9. “The English Gentlewoman,” 1631, 1633, 4to; 1641, fol. 10. “Discourse of Detraction,” 1635, 12mo. 11. “The Arcadian Princess, or the triumph of justice,” 1635, 8vo. 12. “Survey of History, or a nursery for gentry; a discourse historical and poetical,” 1638, 4to. 13. “A spiritual Spicery, containing sundry sweet tractates of devotion and piety,” 1638, 12mo. 14. “Mercurius Britannicus, or the English intelligencer,” a tragi-comedy, acted at Paris, and a satire upon the republicans, 16-H, second edit. 4to. 15. “Time’s Treasury, or Academy for the accomplishment of the English gentry in arguments of discourse, habit, fashion, &c.” 1655, 1656, 4to. 16. “Congratulatory poem on his Majesty, upon his happy arrival in our late discomposed Albion,” 1660, 4to. 17. “Regicidium,” a tragi-comedy, 1665, 8vo. To these Mr. Ellis has added “Panedone, or health from Helicon,” 1621, 8vo; and Mr. Malone thinks that “The description of a Good Wife, or a rare one among women,” 1619, 8vo, was also his. Specimens of the former are given by Mr. Ellis, and of the latter, by Mr. Park, in the Censura Literaria. Mr. Ellis’s specimens of Brathvvaite’s powers as a poet are, perhaps, less favourable than some given by Mr. Dibdin in his Bibliomania, from the “Arcadian Princess.” It appears to us, that in his poetry, as in his prose, he excels’most as a painter of manners, a subject which he had studied all his life, and of which he delivered some of the earliest precepts. His style, however, must still render his works more acceptable to the curious, than to the common reader.

, a painter of landscapes and cattle, was born at Antwerp in 1630; studied landscape after nature, and adorned his designs with figures, correctly drawn and judiciously grouped. His icenes are generally enriched with elegant Roman buildings, fountains, monuments, and ruins. His style, though, inferior, resembled that of John Brueghel. He died in. 1681.

, a painter of history, landscape, and conversations, was born at Antwerp in 1683, and instructed by his father Alexander Van Breda, who was much esteemed as an artist, with whom he continued, profiting by good example and advice, till he was 18 years of age. Having established his reputation in Holland, he accompanied Rysbrack the sculptor to London, where he was highly esteemed and obtained considerable patronage, and particularly that of the earl of Derwentwater, who was beheaded for rebellion in 1715. In London he was much employed by the court and nobility, and was hardly able to supply the demands for his performances. From London, after a residence of five years, he returned to Antwerp, much enriched; and in 1746, when Louis XIV. visited that city, he honoured this master by purchasing four of his pictures; viz. “Christ at the sea of Tiberias,” “Christ performing miracles,” and “two landscapes.” He certainly approached nearer to those great masters whose manner he imitated, Brueghel and Wouwermans, than any other artist of his time. His landscapes are in the style and taste of the former; and his conversations, historical figures, fairs, and battles, are in the manner of the latter. He died in 1750.

, a painter and engraver, was born at Utrecht in 1620, and went, at an early period, for improvement to Rome, where the society of Flemish painters, called Bentvogels, distinguished him by the appellation of Bartolomeo. Among the superb ruins and beautiful objects, in and about the city, he acquired an elegant taste; and he peculiarly excelled in landscapes, which he enriched with historical subjects. The figures and animals, which he introduced, were elegantly disposed, and executed with spirit and freedom: especially when they were not larger than the small size, in which he usually painted them. His manner, particularly with respect to colouring, gradually improved; hia touch is light and spirited, his tone of colouring very pleasing, his taste altogether of the Roman school, and his pictures are distinguished both by force and delicacy. The draperies of his figures, which are gracefully proportioned and designed, are easy and ornamental, and in his smallest figures, the expression is lively, sensible, and natural. His pictures are exceedingly rare, and highly valued. We have of his etching a set of 24 views, and landscapes, ornamented with ruins, &c. from his own designs. Sir Robert Strange had an excellent small picture of Breenberg’s, a view of the monument of Caecilia Metella, situated near the banks of the Tiber, a few miles distant from Rome. The foreground is beautifully enriched with figures, and the whole painted with great transparency. The sky in particular is penciled with an elegance which exceeds any thing of the kind in the works of Wouwermans. Breenberg died in 1660.

, called Cavalier, a painter of landscapes, was born at Antsverp in 1677, and remained under the instruction of old Rysbrack, the landscape painter, for three years, after which period he became, in consequence of his close application, competent to commence the practice of his art. Having been diverted from his purpose of visiting Italy by the encouraging reception which he met with at Francfort and Nuremberg, he spent two years with his brother, Francis Breydel, at the court of Hesse-Cassel; and afterwards went to Amsterdam, where he copied several views of the Rhine, from the designs of Griffier, and thus improved his colouring, pencilling, and taste of design, so that the works of this artist may be regarded as his second and best school. At length he settled at Ghent, where his performances were much admired; but he was reduced by extravagance to the necessity of earning money expeditiously, and to multiply pictures much inferior in design and execution to others which had been produced by his pencil. His health declined towards the close of his life; and his performances during the intervals of ease which he enjoyed, amidst recurring paroxysms of the gout, wanted the spirit, delicate finishing, and firmness of touch, of his better days. Whilst the ideas and style of Griftier were his models, his pictures, principally views of the Rhine, were well designed, neatly executed, and excellently coloured. But he changed this manner, in order to imitate Velvet Breughel, whose works were universally admired, and selected for his subjects battles, sieges, and encampments. He often copied the prints of Vandermeulen; but afterwards composed very readily in this style, without borrowing from any other artist. His best pictures are full of spirit, his touch is firm, and well adapted to his style, and his design is correct. Some of them appear too laboured, but others are full of harmony. He died in 1744.

, brother of the above, was born at Antwerp, in 1679, and it is generally supposed that he was a disciple of old Rysbrack, as well as his brother Charles; but he chose very different subjects; for, at an early time of life he painted portraits with so great success, that he was appointed painter to the court of Hesse-Cassel, where his works were very much esteemed. He also painted conversations, feasts, assemblies, and carnivals, subjects very pleasing to the lovers of the art, and on that account he was induced to paint a great many in that style. However, from a levity of temper, he quitted the court of Hesse, where he was exceedingly caressed, and went to England, where, probably, he found sufficient encouragement, as he continued there for several years along with his friend Vandermyn. His conversations and other compositions are finely executed, agreeably coloured, and well disposed; and those pictures of his band are most preferred where he has endeavoured to give a proper variety to his figures. In those the dresses are usually in the mode of the time; the persons represented are of different ranks and occupations, mixed with some of the military order; and through the whole there is an appearance of nature, truth, and a great deal of spirit. He died in 17 So.

Mr. Walpole, in his Anecdotes, says, that “Woolaston the painter, who was a good performer on the violin and flute, had played at the concert held at the house of that extraordinary person, Thomas Britton the small-coal man, whose picture he twice drew, one of which was purchased ]by sir Hans Sloane, and is now in the British museum: there is a mezzotinto from it. T. Britton, who made much noise in his time, considering his low station and trade, was a collector of all sorts of curiosities, particularly drawings, prints, books, manuscripts on uncommon subjects, as mystic divinity, the philosopher’s stone, judicial astrology, and magic; and musical instruments, both in and out of vogue. Various were the opinions concerning him; some thought his musical assembly only a cover for seditious meetings; others, for magical purposes. He was taken for an atheist, a presbyterian, a Jesuit But Woolaston the painter, and the son of a gentleman who had likewise been a member of that club, averred it as their opinions, that Britton was a plain, simple, honest man, who only meant to amuse himself. The subscription was but ten shillings a year; Britton found the instruments, and they had coffee at a penny a dish. Sir Hans Sloane bought many of his books and Mss. now in the Museum, when they were sold by auction at Tom’s coffeehouse, near Ludgate.”

, York herald, whose real name was Brookesworth, until he changed it to Brooke, was bred to the trade of a painter-stainer, of which company he became free, September 3, 1576, and leaving this, he became an officer at arms. He was so extremely worthless and perverse, that his whole mind seems bent to malice and wickedness: unawed by virtue or station, none were secure from his unmerited attacks. He became a disgrace to the college, a misfortune to his contemporaries, and a misery to himself. With great sense and acquirements, he sunk into disgrace and contempt. He was particularly hostile to Camden, publishing “A Discovery of Errors” found in his Britannia. Camden returned his attack partly by silence, and partly by rallying Brooke, as entirely ignorant of his own profession, incapable of translating or understanding the “Britannia,” in which he had discovered faults, offering to submit the matter in dispute to the earl Marshal, the college of heralds, the society of antir quaries, or four persons learned in these studies. Irritated still more, he wrote a “Second Discovery of Errors,” which he presented to James I. January 1, 1619-20, who, on the 4th following, prohibited its publication, but it was published by Anstis, in 1723, in 4to. In it are Camden’s supposed errors, with his objections, Camden’s reply, and his own answers. In the appendix, in two columns, are placed the objectionable passages in the edition of 1594, and the same as they stood in that of 1600. In 1622, he published a valuable work, dedicated to James I. entitled “A Catalogue and Succession of Kings, Princes, Dukes, Marquises, Earls, and Viscounts of this Realm, since the Norman Conquest, until 1619, &c.” small folio. In his address to his majesty, he says, “he had spent fifty years’ labour and experience, having served his majesty and the late queen Elizabeth, of famous memory, forty years an more.” That no doubt might be entertained of his ability, he said he had in his custody the collections of the principal heralds deceased, before and during his time, adding, without ostentation be it spoken, he held his library better furnished than the office of arms. He does not neglect to intreat James to prohibit upstarts and mountebanks from impoverishing his majesty’s poor servants, the officers of arms, who labour daily, and spend both their bodies and substance in doing their duty. He was twice suspended and imprisoned for scandalous misbehaviour: the first time, for his shameful conduct to Segar, Garter; and in 1620, a petition was exhibited against him and Creswell as disturbers of the whole body of heralds. On Oct. 15,

, a celebrated painter, according to some, was born at Oudenarde, in Flanders, or according to others, at Haerlem, in Holland, in 1608. His parents were of the poorer sort. His mother sold to the country people bonnets and handkerchiefs, on which Adrian, when almost in infancy, used to paint flowers and birds, and while thus employed, was discovered by Francis Hals, an eminent artist, who, charmed with the ease and taste he displayed in his art, proposed to take him as an apprentice, and Brouwer did not long hesitate about accepting such an dffer. His master soon discovered his superior talents, and separated him from his companions, that he might profit the better by him, locked him up in a garret, and compelled him to work, while he nearly starved him, but some pieces he painted by stealth, which probably irritated his jailor to be more watchful of him. By the advice, however, of Adrian Van Ostade, one of his companions, he contrived to make his escape, and took refuge in a church. There, almost naked, and not knowing where to go, he was recognised by some person, who brought him back to his master, and by means of a suit of clothes and some caresses, effected a temporary reconciliation; but being again subjected to the same mercenary and tyrannical usage, he made his escape a second time, and went to Amsterdam, where he had the happiness to find that his name was well known, and that his works bore a great price. A picture dealer with whom he lodged, gave him an hundred ducatoons for a painting representing gamesters, admirably executed, which Brouwer, who had never possessed so much money, spent in a tavern in the course of ten days. He then returned to his employer, and when asked what he had done with his money, answered that he had got rid of it, that he might be more at leisure; and this unfortunate propensity to alternate work and extravagance marked the whole of his future life, and involved him in many ridiculous adventures and embarrassments unworthy of a man of genius. As soon as ‘he had finished any piece, he offered it for sale; and if it did not produce a stipulated price, he burnt it, and began another with greater care. Possessing a vein of low humour, and engaging, both sober and drunk, in many droll adventures, he removed from Amsterdam to Antwerp, where he was arrested as a spy, and committed to prison. This circumstance introduced him to an acquaintance with the duke d’Aremberg, who, having observed his genius, by some slight sketches drawn with black lead while in custody, requested Rubens to furnish him with materials for painting. Brouwer chose for his subject a groupe of soldiers playing at cards in a corner of the prison; and when the picture was finished, the duke himself was astonished, and Rubens, when he saw it, offered for it the sum of 600 guilders. The duke, however, retained it, and gave the painter a much larger sum. Upon this, Rubens procured his release, and received him into his house; but, uninfluenced by gratitude to his benefactor, he stole away, and returned to the scenes of low debauch, to which he had been formerly accustomed. Being reduced to the necessity of flying from justice, he took refuge in France; and, having wandered through several towns, he was at length constrained by indigence to return to Antwerp, where he was taken ill, and obliged to seek relief in an hospital; and in this asylum of self-procured poverty and distress he died in his 32d year. Rubens lamented his death, and procured for him an honourable interment in the church of the Carmelites.

Dr. Brown was a man of uncommon ingenuity, but unfortunately tinctured with an undue degree of self-opinion, and perhaps the bias of his mind to insanity will assign this best cause, as well as form the best excuse, for this. genius was extensive; for, besides his being so elegant a prose writer in various kinds of composition, he was a poet, a musician, and a painter. His learning does not, however, appear to have been equal to his genius. His invention was, indeed, inexhaustible; and hence he was led to form magnificent plans, the execution of which required a greater depth of erudition than he was possessed of. In divinity, properly so called, as including an extensive knowledge of the controverted points of theology, and a critical acquaintance with the Scriptures, he was not deeply conversant. All we can gather from his sermons is, that his ideas were liberal, and that he did not lay much stress on the disputed doctrines of Christianity. His temper, we are told, was suspicious, and sometimes threw him into disagreeable altercations with his friends; but this arose, in a great measure, if not entirely, from the constitutional disorder described above, a very suspicious turn of mind being one of the surest prognostics of lunacy. He has been charged with shifting about too speedily, with a view to preferment; and it was thought, that his “Thoughts on Civil Liberty, Licentiousness, and Faction,” seemed to have something of this appearance. He, however, in that performance endeavoured to remove the objection, by observing, that, if he had indirectly censured those whom he had formerly applauded, he never was attached to men, but measures; and that, if he had questioned the conduct of those only who were then out of power, he had heretofore questioned their conduct with the same freedom, when in the fulness of their power. Upon the whole, Dr. Brown’s defects, which chiefly arose from a too sanguine temperament of constitution, were compensated by many excellencies and virtues. With respect to his writings, they are all of them elegant. Even those which are of a more temporary nature may continue to be read with pleasure, as containing a variety of curious observations; and in his Estimate are many of those unanswerable truths that can never be unseasonable or unprofitable.

, a Scotch artist, the son of a goldsmith and watchmaker, was born in 1752 at Edinburgh, and was early destined to take up the profession of a painter. He travelled into Italy in 1771, and durmg the course of ten years residence there, the pencil and crayon were ever in his hand, and the sublime thoughts of Raphael and Michael Angelo ever in his imagination. By continual practice he obtained a correctness and elegance of contour, rarely surpassed by any British artist, but he unfortunately neglected the mechanism of the pallet till his taste was so refined that Titian, and Murillo, and Correggio made his heart to sink within him when he touched the canvass. When he attempted to lay in his colours, the admirable correctness of his contour was lost, and he had not self-sufficiency to persevere till it should be recovered in that tender evanescent outline which is so difficult to be attained even by the most eminent painters. At Rome he met with sir William Young and Mr. Townley; who, pleased with some very beautiful drawings done by him in pen and ink, took him with them, as a draftsman, into Sicily. Of the antiquities of this celebrated island he took several very fine views in pen and ink, exquisitely finished, yet still preserving the character and spirit of the buildings he intended to represent. He returned some years afterwards from Italy to his native town, where he was much beloved and esteemed, his conversation being extremely acute and entertaining on most subjects, but peculiarly so on those of art; and his knowledge of music 'being very great, and his taste in it extremely just and refined. Lord Monboddo gave him a general invitation to his elegant and convivial table, and employed him ip, making several drawings in pencil for him. Mr. Brown, however, in 1786, came to London, and was caressed by scholars and men of taste in that metropolis, where he was very much employed as a painter of small portraits in black lead pencil, which were always correctly drawn, and exhibited, with a picturesque fidelity, the features and character of the person who sat to him.:

Mr. Brown was not only known as an exquisite drafts.­man, he was also a good philosopher, a sound scholar, and endowed with a just and refined taste in all the liberal and polite arts, and a man of consummate worth and integrity. Soon after his death his “Letters on the Poetry and Music of the Italian Opera,” 12mo, were published. They were originally written to his friend lord Monboddo, who wished to have Mr. Brown’s opinion on those subjects, which have so intimate a connection with his work on the Origin and Progress of Language; and who was so pleased with the style and observations contained in them, that he wrote an introduction, which was published with them, in one volume, 12mo, 1789, for the benefit of his widow. The letters, written with great elegance and perspicuity, are certainly the production of a strong and fervid mind, acquainted with the subject; and must be useful to most of the frequenters of the Italian opera, by enabling them to understand the reasons on which the pleasure they receive at that musical performance is founded, a knowledge in which they are generally very deficient. Not being written for publication, they have that spirit and simplicity which every man of genius diffuses through any subject which he communicates in confidence, and which he is but too apt to refine away when he sits down to compose a work for the public. Lord Monboddo, in the fourth volume of the Origin and Progress of Language, speaking of Mr. Brown, says, “The account that I have given of the Italian language is taken from one who resided above ten years in Italy; and who, besides understanding the language perfectly, is more learned in the Italian arts of painting, sculpture, music, and poetry, than any man I ever met with. His natural good taste he has improved by the study of the monuments of ancient art, to be seen at Rome and Florence; and as beauty in all the arts is pretty much the same, consisting of grandeur and simplicity, variety, decorum, and a suitableness to the subject, I think he is a good judge of language, and of writing, as well as of painting, sculpture, and music.” A very well-written character in Latin, by an advocate of Edinburgh, is appended to the Letters. Mr. Brown left behind him several very highly-finished portraits in pencil, and many very exquisite sketches in pencil and in pen and ink, which he had taken of persons and of places in Italy; particularly a book of studies of heads, taken from the life, an inestimable treasure to any history painter, as a common-place book for his pictures, the heads it contained being all of them Italian ones, of great expression, or of high character. He was so enraptured with his art, and so assiduous in the pursuit of it, that he suffered no countenance of beauty, grace, dignity, or expression, to pass him unnoticed; and to be enabled to possess merely a sketch for himself, of any subject that struck his fancy, he would make a present of a high-finished drawing to the person who permitted his head to be taken by him. The characteristics of his hancl were delicacy, correctness, and taste, as the drawings he made from many of Mr. Townley’s best statues very plainly evince. Of his mind, the leading features were acuteness, liberality, and sensibility, joined to a character firm, vigorous, and energetic. The last efforts of this ingenious artist were employed in making two very exquisite drawings, the one from Mr. Townley’s celebrated bust of Homer, the other from a fine original bust of Pope, supposed to have been the work of Rysbrac. From these drawings two very beautiful engravings have been made by Mr. Bartolozzi and his pupil Mr. Bovi. After some stay in London, his health, which had never been robust, yielded to extraordinary application, and he was forced to try a seavoyage, and return on a visit to Edinburgh, to settle his father’s affairs, who was then dead, having been some time before in a state of imbecility. On the passage from London to Leith, he was somehow neglected as he lay sick on his hammock, and was on the point of death when he arrived at Leith. With much difficulty he was brought up to Edinburgh, and laid in the bed of his friend Runciman, the artist, who had died not long before in the same place. Here he died, Sept. 5, 1787. His portrait with Runciman, disputing about a passage in Shakspeare’s Tempest, is in the gallery at Dryburgh abbey. This was the joint production of Brown and Runciman before the death of the latter in 1784.

Mr. Browne’s application to the law did not prevent his occasionally indulging himself in the exercise of his poetical talents. It was not long after his settlement at Lincoln’s-inn that he wrote his poem on “Design and Beauty,” addressed to Highmore the painter, for whom he had a great friendship. In this, one of the longest of his poems, he shews an extensive knowledge of the Platonic philosophy; and pursues, through the whole, the idea of beauty advanced by that philosophy. By design is here meant, in a large and extensive sense, that power of genius which enables the real artist to collect together his scattered ideas, to range them in proper order, and to form a regular plan before he attempts to exhibit any work in architecture, painting, or poetry. He wrote several other poetical pieces during the interval between his fixing at LincolnVinn and his marriage one of the mostpleasing and popular of which was his “Pipe of Tobacco,” an imitation of Gibber, Ambrose Philips, Thomson, Young, Pope, and Swift, who were then all living; the peculiar manner of these several writers is admirably hit off by our author, who evidently possessed an excellent imitative genius. Indeed, nothing but a nice spirit of discrimination, and a happy talent at various composition, could have enabled him to have succeeded so well as he hath done in the “Pipe of Tobacco.” The imitation of Ambrose Philips was not written by our poet, but by an ingenious friend, the late Dr. John Hoaclly, chancellor of the diocese of Winchester, and second son of -the bishop. Dr. Hoadlyy however, acknowledged that his little imitation was altered so much for the better by Mr. Browne, that he fairly made it his own.

In 1754 Mr. Browne published what may be called his. great work, his Latin poem “I}e Aiumi Immortalitate^ in two books, the reception of which was such as its merit deserved. It immediately excited the applause of the most polite scholars, and has been praised by some of the most eminent and ingenious men of the age, by archbishop Herring, Dr. E. Barnard, R. O. Cambridge, Mr. Upton, bishop Hoadly, bishop Green, Mr. Harris, Dr. Beattie, &c. &c. Its popularity was so great, that several English translations of it appeared in a little time. The first was by Mr. Hay, author of an” Essay on Deformity,“and other pieces; and the second in blank verse, by Dr. Richard Grey, a learned clergyman, well known by his” Memoria Technica,“and his publications in scripture criticism. A third translation was published without a name, but with a laboured preface, containing some quotations from sir John Davies’s” Nosce Teipsum,“which were supposed to be analogous to certain passages in Mr. Browne. All these versions made their appearance in the course of a few months; and there was afterwards printed, by an unknown hand, a translation of the first book. Some years after Mr. Browne’s death, the” De Animi Immortalitate“was again translated by the rev. Mr. Crawley, a clergyman in Huntingdonshire, and more recently Dr. John Lettice published a translation in blank verse, with a commentary and annotations, 1795, 8vo. A close and literal version, of it in prose was inserted by Mr. Highmore the painter in his publication which appeared in 1766, entitled” Essays moral, religious, and miscellaneous," But the best translation is that by Soame Jenyns, esq. printed in his Miscellanies, and since published in Mr. Browne’s poems. These testimonies and attentions paid to our ingenious author’s principal production, are striking evidences of the high sense which was justly entertained of its merit. Not to mention the usefulness and importance of the subject, every man of taste must feel that the poem is admirable for its perspicuity, precision, and order; and that it unites the philosophical learning and elegance of Cicero, with the numbers, and much of the poetry, of Lucretius and Virgil. Mr. Browne intended to have added a third book. In these three books he proposed to carry natural religion as far as it would go, and in so doing, to lay the true foundation of Christianity, of which he was a firm believer. But he went no farther than to leave a fragment of the third book, enough to make us lament that he did not complete the whole.

, an illustrious French painter, was of Scottish extraction, and born in 1619. His father was a statuary by profession. At three years of age it is reported that he drew figures with charcoal; and at twelve he drew the picture of his uncle so well, that it still passes for a fine piece. His father being employed in the gardens at Seguier, and having brought his son along with him, the chancellor of that name took a liking to him, and placed him with Simon Vouet, an eminent painter, who was greatly surprised at young Le Brun’s amazing proficiency. He was afterwards sent to Fontainbleau, to take copies of some of Raphael’s pieces. The chancellor sent him next to Italy, and supported him there for six years. Le Brun, on his return, met with the celebrated Poussin, by whose conversation he greatly improved himself in his art, and contracted a friendship with him which lasted as long as their lives. Cardinal Mazarin, a good judge of painting, took great notice of Le Brun, and often sat by him while he was at work. A painting of St. Stephen, which he finished in 1651, raised his reputation to the highest pitch. Soon after this, the king, upon the representation of M. Colbert, made him his first painter, and conferred on him the order of St. Michael. His majesty employed two hours every day in looking over him, whilst he was painting the family of Darius at Fontainbleau. About 1662, be began his five large pieces of the history of Alexander the Great, in which he is said to have set the actions of that conqueror in a more glorious light than Quintus Curtius in his history. He procured several advantages for the royal academy of painting and sculpture at Paris, and formed the plan of another for the students of his own nation at Rome. There was scarce any thing done for the advancement of the fine arts in which he was not consulted. It was through the interest of M. Colbert that the king gave him the direction of all his works? and particularly of his royal manufactory at the Gobelins, where he had a handsome house, with a genteel salary assigned to him. He was also made director and chancellor of the royal academy, and shewed the greatest zeal to encourage the fine arts in France. He possessed in a great degree that enthusiasm which animates the efforts, and increases the raptures of the artist. Some one said before him of his fine picture of the Magdalen, “that the contrite penitent was really weeping.” “That, 7 * said he,” is perhaps all that you can see; I hear her sigh.“He was endowed with a vast inventive genius, which extended itself to arts of every kind. He was well acquainted with the history and manners of all nations. Besides his extraordinary talents, his behaviour was so genteel, and his address Sq pleasing, that he attracted the regard and affection of the whole court of France: where, by the places and pensions conferred on him by the king, he made a very considerable figure. He died at his house in. the Gobelins in 1690, leaving a wife, but no children. He was author of a curious treatise of” Physiognomy“and of another of the” Characters of the Passions."

, painter, and a famous traveller, born in 1652, at the Hague, began his travels through Russia, Persia, and the East Indies in 1674, and did not end them till 1708; they were printed at Amsterdam; the voyage to the Levant in 1714, fol. and those of Russia, Persia, &c. in 1718, 2 vols. folio, which last were translated into English, and published in 1736, 2 vols. folio. The edition of 1718 is greatly esteemed on account of the plates; but the edition of Rouen, of 1725, of 5 vols. 4to, is more useful, as the abbe Baunier has improved the style, enriched it with many excellent notes, and has added to it the voyage of Desmousseaux, &c. Bruyn is an inquisitive and instructive traveller; but he is^not always accurate, and his diction is far from being elegant. He died in 1719.

, an eminent Italian painter, was born at Florence in 1262, and was for some years a disciple of Andrea Tassi. He was pleasant in his conversation, and somewhat ingenious in his compositions. A friend, whose name was Bruno, consulting him one day how he might give more expression to his subject, Buffalmacco answered, that he had nothing to do, but to make the words come out of the mouths of his figures by labels, on which they might be written, which had been before practised by Cimnbue. Bruno, thinking him in earnest, did so, as several German painters did after him; who, improving upon Bruno, added answers to questions, and made their figures enter into a kind of conversation. Buffalmacco died in 1340.

, a most illustrious painter, sculptor, and architect, was born in the castle of Gaprese, in Tuscany, March 6, 1474, and descended from the noble family of the counts of Canossa. At the time of his birth, his father, Lodovico di Leonardo Buonarroti Sinione, was podesta, or governor of Caprese and Chiusi, and as he had not risen above the superstitious belief in astrological predictions, so common in that age, he was probably pleased to hear that “his chikl would be a very extraordinary genius.” His biographers indeed go so far as to tell us of a prediction, that he would excel in painting, sculpture, and architecture. When of a proper age, Michel Angelo was sent to a grammar-school at Florence, where, whatever progress he might make in his books, he contracted a fondness for drawing, which at first alarmed the pride of his family, but his father at length perceiving that it was hopeless to give his mind any other direction, placed him under Domenico Ghirlanda‘io, the most eminent painter at that time in Florence, and one of the most celebrated in Italy. He was accordingly articled for three years to Ghirlanda’io, from April 1488, but is said to have reaped no benefit from his instructions, as his master soon became jealous of his talents. He rapidly, however, surpassed his contemporary students, by the force of his genius, and his study of nature; and adopted a style of drawing and design more bold and daring than Ghirlandaio had been accustomed to see practised in his school; and, from an anecdote Vasari tells, it would seem Michel Angelo soon felt himself even superior to his master. One of the pupils copying a female portrait from a drawing by Ghirlandu'io, he took a pen and made a strong outline round it on the same paper, to shew him its defects; and the superior style of the contour was as much admired as the act was considered confident and presumptuous. His great facility in copying with accuracy whatever objects were before him sometimes forced a compliment even from Ghirlandaio himself.

That Michel Angelo might have an opportunity of adding to his lame as a painter, the gonfaloniere commissioned him to paint a large historical subject, to ornament the hall of the ducal palace; and as it was the honourable ambition of Soderini to employ the talents of his country in the establishment of its fame, he engaged the abilities of Leonardo da Vinci, at the same time, to execute a corresponding picture to occupy the opposite side of the hall. An event in the war between the Florentines and Pisans, was the subject Michel Angelo chose, and that of Leonardo da Vinci was a battle of cavalry. Michel Angelo’s cartoon was the most extraordinary work that had appeared since the revival of the arts in Italy, but as no part of it now remains, an idea of it can be formed only from Vasari’s account and description. Such was the excellence of this work, that some thought it absolute perfection; not to be rivalled, and hopeless to be approached; and certainly some credit is due to this opinion, as from the time it was placed in the papal hall, it was for many years constantly visited by foreigners as well as natives, who, by studying and drawing from it, became eminent masters. It requires to be added, however, that the cartoon was all that was finished; from various causes, the picture itself was never begun, and the cartoon, which was exhibited to students for their improvement, was by degrees mutilated and destroyed, an irreparable injury to posterity.

The merits of Michel Angelo, as an artist, have been so frequently the object of discussion, that it would be impossible to examine or analyse the various opinions thsrt have been published, without extending this article to an immoderate length. Referring, therefore, to our authorities, and especially to Mr. Duppa’s elaborate “Life of Michel Angelo,” which we have followed in the preceding sketch, we shall present the following outline from Mr. Fuseli, and conclude with some interesting circumstances in the personal history of this great artist: “Sublimity of conception,” says Mr. Fuseli, “grandeur of form, and breadth of manner, are the elements of Michel Angelo’s style; by these principles he selected or rejected the objects of imitation. As painter, as sculptor, as architect, he attempted, and above any other man succeeded, to unite magnificence of plan, and endless variety of subordinate parts, with the utmost simplicity and breadth. His line is uniformly grand. Character and beauty were admitted only as far as they could be made subservient to grandeur. The child, the female, meanness, deformity, were by him indiscriminately stamped with grandeur. A beggar rose from his hand the patriarch of poverty; the hump of Jiis dwarf is impressed with dignity; his women are moulds of generation; his infants teem with the man; his men are a race of giants. This is the” Terribil Via“hinted at by Agostino Carracci. To give the most perfect ease to the most perplexing difficulty, was the exclusive power of Michel Angelo. He is the inventor of epic painting in the sublime compartments of the Sistine chapel. He has personified motion in the groupes of the Cartoon of Pisa; embodied sentiment on the monuments of St. Lorenzo; unravelled the features of meditation in his Prophets and Sibyls; and, in the Last Judgment, with every attitude that varies the human body, traced the mastertrait of every passion that sways the human heart. Neither as painter or sculptor he ever submitted to copy an individual, Julio II. only excepted, and in him he represented the reigning passion rather than the man. In painting he contented himself with a negative colour, and, as the painter of mankind, rejected all meretricious ornament. The fabric of St. Peter’s, scattered into infinity of jarring parts by his predecessors, he concentrated, suspended the cupola, and to the most complex gave the air of the most simple of edifices. Such, take him all in all, was Michel Angelo, the salt of art; sometimes he, no doubt, had moments, and perhaps periods of dereliction, deviated into manner, or perplexed the grandeur of his forms with futile and ostentatious anatomy; both met with herds of copyists, and it has been his fate to have been and still to be censured for their folly.”

, was the natural son of the lord of Bnsbec, or Boesbec, and born at Commines, a town in Flanders, 1522. The early proofs he gave of extraordinary genius induced his father to spare neither care nor expence to get him properly instructed, and to obtain his legitimation from the emperor Charles V. He was sent to study at the universities of Louvain, Paris, Venice, Bologna, and Padua, and was some time at London* whither he attended the ambassador of Ferdinand, king of the Romans, and was present at the marriage of Philip and Mary. In 1554 he was appointed ambassador at Constantinople; but made a very short stay there. Being sent back the following year, his second embassy proved longer and more fortunate; for it lasted seven years, and ended in a beneficial treaty. He acquired a perfect, knowledge of the state of the Ottoman empire, and the true means of attacking it with success; on which subject he composed a very judicious discourse, entitled “De re militari contra Turcam instituenda consilium.” Without neglecting any thing that related to the business of his embassy, he laboured successfully for the republic of letters, collecting inscriptions, purchasing manuscripts, searching after rare plants, and inquiring into the nature of animals, and when he set out the second time to Constantinople, he carried with him a painter, to make drawings of the plants and animals that were unknown in the west. The relation which he wrote of his two journies to Turkey is much commended by Thuanus. He was desirous of passing the latter part of his life in privacy, but the emperor Maximilian made choice of him to be governor to his sons; and when his daughter princess Elizabeth was married to Charles IX. of France, Busbec was nominated to conduct her to Paris. This queen gave him the whole superintendance of her houshold and her affairs, and, when she quitted France, on her husband’s death, left him there as her ambassador, in which station he was retained by the emperor Rodolph until 1592, when, on a journey to the Low Countries, he was attacked by a party of soldiers, and so harshly treated as to bring on a fever which proved fatal in October of that year. He was a man of great learning, and an able antiquary. The public is indebted to him for the “Monumentum Anciranum,” which would be one of the most curious and instructive inscriptions of antiquity, if it was entire, as it contained a list of the actions of Augustus. Passing through Ancyra, a city of Galatia, Busbec caused all that remained legible of that inscription to be copied from the marble of a ruined palace, and sent it to Schottus the Jesuit. It may be seen in Gruevius’s Suetonius. Gronovius published this Monumentum Anciranum at Leyden in 1695, with notes, from a more full and correct copy than that of Busbec. Busbec also vyrote “Letters from France to the emperor Rodolph,” which exhibit an interesting picture of the French court at that period. An edition of all his letters was published by Elzivir at Leyden, 1633, and at London in 1660, 12mo. His “Itinera Constantinopolitanum et Amasianum” was printed at Antwerp, 1582, 4to; “Legationis Turcicæ Epistolæ,” Francfort, 1595, 8vo, &c.

, a painter of landscape, sea-ports, and cattle^ was born at Ryswickj in 1631, and became a disciple of John Van Goyen, under whose instruction and example he made a rapid progress in his profession, and by whom his name was changed from Vander Touw to Vander Cabel. He copied nature and designed every object before he inserted any in his compositions. His taste in designing animals and figures was formed after that of Castiglione; and in landscape his model was the style of Salvator Rosa. His manner is great, and much after the gout of the Italian school. The touchings of his trees arc excellent; his figures and animals are very correct, and marked with spirit. Although his different pictures have unequal merit, they are all distinguished by the freedom of his hand, and the fine touch of his pencil. In his colouring he was solicitous to imitate the Caracci and Mohi; but the beauty of his design and composition is often injured by too dark and deep tone of colouring. His etchings, of which some few remain, are performed in a slight, free style. He died in 1695.

No painter ever was hurried along by a greater torrent of commissions, and no painter ever exerted himself with greater equality of execution. Light grounds and virgin tints have contributed to preserve the freshness of his pictures: the family of Darius presented to Alexander, in the Pisani palace at Venice, and the S. Giorgio, once at Verona, now in the Louvre, have, without the smallest loss of the bloom that tones them, received from time that mellowness, that sober hue, which time alone can give. More fixed in a system, and consequently nearer to manner than Titian, with less purity and delicacy; greyer, not so warm, so sanguine, or so juicy as Tintoretto, Paolo excels both in fascinating breadth of bland and lucid demi-tints; and in his convivial scenes, though thronged with pomp, gorgeous attire, and endless ornament, never once forgets that they were admitted to shew and not to eclipse the actors. The actors were not, indeed, those of the historian, no more than the costume that of the times, or the ornaments and architecture those of the country. The ostentation of ornamental painting is not to be arraigned at the tribunal of serious history. The humble guests of Cana, the publican forsaking his till, Magdalen at the feet of Christ, travestied into Venetian patriarchs, belles, or nobles, were only called upon to lend their names, and by their authority to palliate or flatter the reigning taste or vice of a debauched and opulent public.

There was also Benedict Cagliari, a painter and sculptor, who was Paul’s brother, and lived and studied with him. He assisted him, and afterwards his sons, in finishing several of their compositions; but was most successful in. painting architecture, in which he delighted. His style in painting was like his brother’s; and not being ambitious enough of fame to keep his productions separate, they are, in a great measure, confounded with Paul’s. He practised for the most part in fresco; and some of his best pieces are in chiaro-obscuro. He possessed moreover a tolerable stock of learning, was something of a poet, and had a peculiar talent in satire. He died in 1598, aged 'sixty-six.

, a historical and portrait painter, was born at Calcar, a city of Cleves, in 1499, and was the principal disciple of Titian; and by the precepts of that great master, made such progress, that several of his designs and paintings have been accounted, by very sufficient judges, the work of Titian’s own hand. Even Goltzius himself, when at Naples he was examining some of Calcar’s portraits, was of opinion they were Titian’s, nor could he be undeceived till he saw the name of Calcar inscribed on others, which were equally excellent. It is also affirmed by Sandrart, that he imitated the works of Raphael with such exactness, as to deceive the connoisseurs. Vasari, who knew him at Naples, says that it is impossible to observe in the works of this master, the smallest traces of the Flemish taste. He designed all the heads for the works of Vasari, and the anatomical figures in the works of Vesalius. Rubens possessed a most capital picture by Calcar, a nativity, afterwards purchased by Sandrart, and sold by him to the Emperor Ferdinand. Calcar died in 1546.

, called IL Cremonese, an eminent artist of Ferrara, where he was born about 1600, studied and imitated, beyond all others, the tones of Titian, and carried the illusion to such a degree, that his half-figures, bacchanals, and small histories, entered the best galleries of Rome and Bologna as originals: nor is he easily discovered by the best eye or taste, but from the admission of some more modern conceit, or carelessness of execution. That he possessed talents superior to what mere mimickry can confer, is evident from his St. Mark, in the church of S. Benedetto at Ferrara, a majestic, correct, expressive figure, girt by a profusion of volumes, whose picturesque arrangement and truth of touch procured him the name of the Book-Painter (Pittor da' Libri). Immediately after the execution of this work, some say that he disappeared, and was heard of no more: whilst others, with less probability of conjecture, extend the date of his death to 1660.

, a famous engraver, son of John. Callot, herald of arms in Lorrain, was descended from an ancient and noble family, and born at Nancy in 1593. He cherished almost from hig infancy a taste and spirit for the belles lettres, as well as for the fine arts. When he was only twelve years old he set off for Rome, without the knowledge of his parents, in order to see the many curiositjes there he had heard so much talk of; but his money failing, he joined himself to a party of Bohemians, who were going into Italy, and went with them to Florence. There he was taken under the protection of an officer of the great duke, who placed him to learn designing under Remigio Canta Gailina, a skilful painter and engraver. Afterwards he got to Rome, where he was known by a merchant of Nancy, and sent immediately home to his parents. When he was about 14 years of age he left home again, and directed his course towards Rome but being discovered by his elder*- brother, who was at Turin about business, he was brought buck a second time to Nancy. His passion, however, for seeing Rome being still ardent and irresistible, his father at length gave him leave to go in the train of a gentleman whom the duke of Lorrain sent to the pope.

In his last testament, after a devout introduction, and bequeathing eight pounds to the poor of the parish in which he should happen to die, he bequeaths to sir Fulke Grevile, lord Brooke, who preferred him gratis to his office, a piece of plate of ten pounds; to the company of painter stainers of London, he gave sixteen pounds to buy them a piece of plate, upon which he directed this inscription, “Gul. Camdenus Clarenceux filius Sampsonjs, Pictoris Londinensis, dono dedit;” he bestowed the sum of twelve pounds on the company of cordwainers, or shoemakers of London, to purchase them a piece of plate, on which the same inscription was to be engraved. Then follow the legacies to his private friends. As to his books and papers, he directs that sir Robert Cotton of Conington, should take out such as he had borrowed of him, and then he bequeaths to him all his printed books and manuscripts, excepting such as concern arms and heraldry, which, with his ancient seals, he bequeaths to his successor in the office of Clarenceux, provided, because they cost him a considerable sum of money, he gave to his cousin John Wyat, what the kings at arms Garter and Norroy for the time being should think fit, and agreed also to leave them to his successor. But notwithstanding this disposition of his books and papers, Dr. John Williams, then dean of Westminster, and bishop of Lincoln, afterwards archbishop of York, procured all the printed books for the new library erected in the church of Westminster. It is understood, that his collections in support of his History, with respect to civil affairs, were before this time deposited in the Cotton library; for as to those that related to ecclesiastical matters, when asked for them by Dr. Goodman, son to his great benefactor, he declared he stood engaged to Dr. Bancroft, archbishop of Canterbury. They came afterwards to archbishop Laud, and are supposed to have been destroyed when his papers fell into the hands of Mr. Prynne, Mr. Scot, and Hugh Peters; for upon a diligent search made by Dr. Sancroft, soon after his promotion to that see, there was not a line of them to be found, as we have already mentioned. His body was removed to his house in London, and on the 19th of November, carried in great pomp to Westminster abbey, and after a sermon preached by Dr. Christopher Sutton, was deposited in the south aile, near the learned Casaubon, and over against Chaucer. Near the spot was erected a handsome monument of white marble, with an inscription, erroneous as to his age, which is stated to be seventy-four, whereas he wanted almost six months of seventy-three. At Oxford, Zouch Townley, of Christ Church, who was esteemed a perfect master of the Latin tongue in all its purity and elegance, was appointed to pronounce his funeral oration in public, which is printed by Dr. Smith. The verses written on his death were collected and printed in a thin quarto, entitled “Insignia Camdeni,” Ox. 1624, and his name was enrolled in the list of public benefactors.

, an eminent painter of Venice, was born in 1697, the son of one Bernardo a scene-painter. He followed the profession of his father, and acquired a wildness of conception and a readiness of hand which afterwards supplied him with ideas and dispatch for his nearly numberless smaller works. Tired of the theatre, he went young to Rome, and with great assiduity applied himself to paint views from nature and the ruins of antiquity. On his return to Venice he continued the same studies from the prospects of that city which the combination of nature and art has rendered one of the most magnificent and the most novel of Europe. Numbers of these are exact copies of the spots they represent, and hence highly interesting to those whose curiosity has not been gratified by residence in the metropolis of the Adriatic. Numbers are the compound of his own invention, graceful mixtures of modern and antique, of fancied and real beauties: such he painted for Algarotti. The most instructive and the most novel of these appears to be that view of the grand canal, in which he adopted the idea of Palladio, by substituting the Rial to for its present bridge, with the basilica of Vicenza rising in the centre, the palace Chericato and other fabrics of that great architect rounding the whole. Canaletto made use of the camera to obtain precision, but corrected its defects in the air-tints; he was the first who shewed to artists its real use and limits. He produced great effects somewhat in the manner of Tiepolo, who sometimes made his figures, and impressed a character of vigour on every object he touched: we see them in their most striking aspect. He takes picturesque liberties without extravagance, and combines his objects so congenially, that the common spectator finds nature, and the man of knowledge the art.

, or Cambiaso, called Luchetto, an eminent Genoese painter, was born at Oneglia, near Genoa, in 1527, and became a most expeditious painter, working with both his hands, by which unusual power he executed more designs, and finished more great works with his own pencil in a much shorter time than most other artists could do with several assistants. It is mentioned as a memorable circumstance in his life, that at the age of seventeen he was employed in painting the front of a house in fresco; but whilst he was commencing his work, some Florentine painters who were actually engaged, conceived him to be a mere grinder of colours, and when he took up his pallet and pencils they wished to have prevented his proceeding with it, lest he should spoil the work, but after a few strokes of his pencil they were convinced of their mistake, and respected his singular abilities. Of Cangiagi, it is remarked, that he practised three different modes of painting at three different periods of his life. His first manner was gigantic and unnatural, which he corrected in consequence of the remonstrances of his friend Alessi, the celebrated architect, for his best style, in forming which he consulted nature with attention, and digested his thoughts in sketches, before he began to paint. His third manner was distinguished by a more rapid execution, to which he recurred in order to make more ample provision for his wife and family, and had a great deal of the mannerist. His works at Genoa are very numerous, and he was employed by the king of Spain to adorn part of the Escurial.

, a Spanish artist, and styled the Michel Angelo of Spain, because he excelled in painting, sculpture, and architecture, was born in the city of Grenada in 1600, where his father, an eminent architect, educated him in his own profession, and when his instructions in this branch were completed, he applied himself to the study of sculpture, and made an uncommon progress in a very short time. He next went to Seville, and for eight months studied under Pacheco, and afterwards under Juan del Castillo, in whose academy he executed many noble paintings for the public edifices in Seville, and at the same time gave some specimens of his excellence in statuary, which were highly admired, particularly a “Madonna and Child,” in the great church of Nebriga, and two colossal figures of San Pedro and San Pablo. Count Olivarez was the means of his coming to Madrid, where he was made first royal architect, king’s painter, and preceptor to the prince, don Balthazar Carlos of Austria. Here, as architect, he projected several additional works to the palaces, some public gates to the city, and a triumphal arch erected on the entrance of Mariana, second queen to Philip IV. As a painter, he executed many celebrated compositions in the churches and palaces of Madrid. While in the height of his fame an event happened which involved him in much trouhle. Returning home one evening, he discovered his wife murdered, his house robbed, while an Italian journeyman, on whom the suspicion naturally fell, had escaped. The criminal judges held a court of inquiry, and having discovered that Cano had been jealous of this Italian, and also that he was known to be attached to another woman, they acquitted the fugitive gallant, and condemned the husband. On this he fled to Valencia, and being discovered there, took refuge in a Carthusian convent about three leagues from that city, where he seemed for a time determined upon taking the order, but afterwards was so imprudent as to return to Madrid, where he was apprehended, and ordered to be put to the torture, which he suffered without uttering 3r single word. On this the king received him again into favour, and as Cano saw there was no absolute safety but within the pale of the church, he solicited the king with that view, and was named residentiary of Grenada. The chapter objected to his nomination, but were obliged to submit, and their church profited by the appointment, many sculptures and paintings being of his donation. The last years of his life he spent in acts of devotion and charity. When he had no money to bestow in alms, which was frequently the case, he would call for paper, and give a beggar a drawing, directing him where to carry it for sale. To the Jews he bore an implacable antipathy. On his death-bed he would not receive the sacraments from a priest who attended him, because he had administered them to the converted Jews; and from another he would not accept the crucifix presented to him in his last moments, telling him it was so bungling a piece of work that he could not endure the sight of it. In this manner died Alonso Cano, at the age of seventy-six, in 1676; a circumstance, says his biographer, which shows that his ruling passion for the arts accompanied him in the article of death, superseding even religion itself in those moments when the great interests of salvation naturally must be supposed to occupy the mind to the exclusion of every other idea.

In Mr. Fuseli’s opinion, Cano excelled, as a painter, with the single exception of Velasquez, all his contemporaries, and yet seems to have owed his superiority entirely to nature: his design is correct, his arrangements happy, and his colour charming. As a sculptor, he gives evident proofs of having studied the antique by the dignity of his forms, the grandeur of his drapery, and elegance of taste. In architecture he was too loaded, too ornamental, and swayed by the fashion of the day. With such talents he connected a whimsical character, and, as the master of a school, scarcely left a pupil that rose above mediocrity. A catalogue of his nearly endless works may be found in Bermudez.

, a painter and engraver, called often from his native place Da Pesaro, was born in 1612, and was a pupil of Pandolfi. After proving himself, by the picture of St. Peter at Fano, less an imitator of Guido than his equal, he entered his school at Bologna more as a rival than as a pupil: the humility which he had affected at his entrance, soon dissolved in a proud display of his powers; and the modest student became the supercilious censor of his companions, and of the master himself. From the general disgust, which the insolence of this conduct had excited, Cantarini fled to Rome, and for some time studied Raffaello and the antiques. When he returned to Bologna, where he taught, and from thence to the court of Mantua, his powers seemed to smooth the road to new success; but fear of those whom he had provoked by arrogance or invective, with the mortification of having failed in the portrait of the duke, impaired his health and drove him to Verona, where he died in 1648, in his thirtysixth year, not without suspicion of having being poisoned by a painter of Mantua, whom he had reviled. Cantarini is not equal to Guido, because the most perfect imitator of a style cannot be called equal to its inventor: but the original beauties which he added, of conception and execution, raise him above all the pupils of that school. If his ideas have less dignity, they are, perhaps, more graceful than those of Guido: if he has less compass of knowledge, he has more accuracy, and no rival in the finish of the extremities. The heads of his saints have been called prodigies of beauty and expression. Sir Robert Strange had a picture of Cantarini’s, “Our Saviour standing on the Globe, attended by Cherubims,” which, he says, is nothing inferior to Guido, inimitably coloured; the composition extremely agreeable, and the whole apparently painted with great facility. Cantarini etched with great spirit. Strutt enumerates some of his works in this manner.

Augustine Caracci was born in 1557, and Hannibal in 1560. Their father, though a taylor in trade, was yet very careful to give his sons a liberal education. Augustine was intended to be bred a scholar; but his genius leading him to arts, he was afterwards put to a goldsmith. He quitted this profession in a little time, and then gave himself up to every thing that pleased his fancy. He first put himself under the tuition of his cousin Lewis; and became a very good designer and painter. He gained some knowledge likewise of all the parts of the mathematics, natural philosophy, rhetoric, music, and most of the liberal arts and sciences. He was also a tolerable poet, and very accomplished in many other respects. Though painting was the profession he always adhered to, yet it was often interrupted by his pursuits in the art of engraving, which he learnt of Cornelius Cort, and in which he surpassed all the masters of his time.

The fame of the Caracci reaching Rome, the cardinal Farnese sent for Hannibal thither, to paint the gallery of his palace. Hannibal was the more willing to go, because he had a great desire to see Raphael’s works, with the antique statues and bas-reliefs. The gusto which he took there from the ancient sculpture, made him change his Bolognian manner for one more learned, but less natural in the design and in the colouring. Augustine followed Hannibal, to assist him in his undertaking of the Farnese gallery; but the brothers not rightly agreeing, the cardinal sent Augustine to the court of the duke of Parma, in whose service he died in 1602, being only forty-five years of age. His most celebrated piece of painting is that of the Communion of St. Jerom, in Bologna: “a piece,” says a connoisseur, “so complete in all its parts, that it was much to be lamented the excellent author should withdraw himself from the practice of an art, in which his abilities were so very extraordinary, to follow the inferior profession of a graver.” Augustine had a natural son, called Antonio, who was brought up a painter under his uncle Hannibal; and who applied himself with so much success to the study of all the capital pieces in Home, that it is thought he would have surpassed even Hannibal himself, if he had lived hut he died at the age of thirty- five, in 1618.

, a celebrated painter, was born at Caravagio, a place in the Milanese, in 1569. His father was a mason by trade, and employed him in making paste for the fresco-painters in Milan. The habit of being constantly among, painters, and seeing them work, produced in him a taste for that art, and without a teacher, without studying eitjier antiques, or the master-pieces of the moderns, he became a great painter. He employed himself entirely in making portraits for four or five years. He found nature the surest guide in his art, and he followed her with a servile obedience. He painted solely after her, without any selection, the beautiful as well as the ordinary; and copied her very defects. On being once shewn some fine antique fig ires, “See,” said he, pointing to the bystanders, “how many more models nature has given me than all your staiuos!” and went immediately into an alehouse, where he painted on the spot a gipsy who happened to be in the street, so as none could find any thing to correct in it.

It was difficult to be upon good terms with him. He was naturally quarrelsome, despised every one, and found no performances good but his own. A man of this temper could not be long without enemies. Some business that he had at Milan obliged him to leave this city, and make a journey to Venice, where he adopted Giorgioni’s manner. His stay here was but short, and he repaired to Rome. He was in such poor circumstances, that he was forced by necessity to work for Josehino, who gave him fruit and flowers to paint. This department was not that wherein he excelled; he therefore left Josehino, to go and paint large figures for Prospero, a painter of grotesque. Prospero every where sounded his praise, and made considerable profit by his works. A picture, the gamester, that Caravagio had painted, so highly pleased the cardinal del Monte, that, having bought it, he requested to see the artist, and kept him in his palace, where he caused him to paint several pieces for the pavilion in his garden.

When Annibal Caracci came to Rome, Caravagio was so forcibly struck with his colouring, that, in spite of his vanity, he exclaimed, “God be thanked, at last I have found one painter in my life-time!” Caravagio used to say of his works, that the merit of every stroke of the pencil he made belonged to nature, and not to him. Without genius, without reading, without the study of his art, she was his only assistant and guide. He was therefore usually called “The naturalist;” a name given likewise to all the painters who, like him, adhered slavishly to nature.

, called also Cigoli and Civolt, an eminent painter, was born in 1559, at the castle of Cigoli, in Tuscany, and became the scholar of Santi di Titi, but after travelling into Lombardy, studied the works of the first masters, and particularly Correggio. He had some taste, also, for poetry and music, but soon became exclusively attached to his particular art. He was employed by the grand duke in the palace Pitti, and afterwards at Rome and Florence exhibited some excellent specimens of his genius. He gave a new style to the Florentine school; but to say that perhaps he was superior to all his contemporaries, that he approached nearer than any other the style of Correggio, are expressions of Baldinucci, which none will believe who has seen the imitations of that master by Baroccio, the Caracci, or Schidone. Cardi, to judge from his pictures as they are now, availed himself with success of Correggio’s chiaroscuro, joined it to learning in design, and set it off by judicious perspective and a far livelier colour than that of the Tuscan school; but his pictures do not exhibit that contrast of tints, that impasto, that splendour, that graceful air, those bold fore-shortenings, which constitute the character of the. heads of Lombard art. In short, he was the inventor of an original but not a steady style; that which he adopted at Rome differs from his former one. If the general tone of his colour be Lembardesque, his draperies resemble those of Paolo Veronese, and sometimes he approaches the depth of Guercino.

, an eminent painter of history, was a native of Genoa, and having prosecuted the study of his art at Rome, and in the school of Passignano at Florence, he became one of the most fertile, original, and seducing machinists of Italy. The most splendid works of this artist, and of his brother John, are the frescoes of the cathedral del Guastato at Genoa, which exhibit a wonderful effect of colouring. He survived his brother 50 years, and distinguished himself by this novel style in the churches and collections of Liguria and Lombardy. It is not easy to conceive why a painter should not have acquired greater celebrity, who united with so many opportunities so many diverging powers; who had equal felicity in oil and fresco, colour and design, velocity and correctness, and had incessant employment, and unrivalled diligence and perseverance. After a prolonged life of 86 years, he died in 1680.

, a native of Italy, who flourished about the beginning of the sixteenth century, was not in any degree considerable as a painter, but is justly entitled to fame as an engraver on wood. He was not, however, the first engraver on that material, as some have asserted, but certainly invented that species distinguished by the name of chiaro-scuro, in imitation of drawing. This he performed by using three blocks the first for the outline and dark shadows the second for the lighter shadows and the third for the half tint. His prints, though slight, are usually very spirited, and in a masterly style. They preserve, at least, a bold, striking resemblance of the sketches of the great painters from whose designs they are taken. Strutt, and, before him, Vasari, mention the following viz. “A Sibyl reading in a book, with an infant holding a flambeau to light her” “The burning of Troy, with Æneas saving his father Anchises” “A descent from the cross” “David cutting off the head of'Goliah;” all from Raphael; and a “Magician seated on the ground, with a book open before him, and in the back-ground a bird with its feathers plucked off,” from Parmigiano. This species of engraving was carried to great perfection by Andrea Andriani, and also by Balthasar Perezzi of Siena, and Parmigiano

, an artist, who was born at Ferrara, in 1501, became a disciple of Garofalo, and proved the best artist of all those who studied in that academy; but when he quitted that master, he devoted his whole time, thoughts, and attention, to study the works of Correggio, and to copy them with a critical care and observation. Jn that labour he spent several years at Parma, Modena, and other cities of Italy, where the best works of that exquisite painter were preserved. He succeeded to admiration, and acquired such an excellence in the imitation of Correggio’s style, and copying his pictures, that many paintings finished by him were taken for originals, and were eagerly purchased by the connoisseurs of that time. Nor is it improbable, that several of the paintings of Girolamo da Carpi pass at this day for the genuine works of Correggio. He died in 1556.

, an eminent Spanish painter, descended from an ancient family, was born at Aviles, in 1614; and learnt the elements of art at Madrid, in the school of Pedro de las Cuevas. He afterwards finished his studies with such success under Bartolome Roman, that he was soon considered as one of the best Spanish painters, and charged with decorating some apartments of the royal palace in frescos, which pleased Philip IV. so much, that he nominated him painter to the court, about 1651. In society with Francisco Rizi, he acquired a surprising facility of execution; hu design is tolerably correct, his colour brilliant and seducing; it resembles the tones of Vandyke; his conception was vigorous, and his composition rich. Madrid, Toledo, Alcala de Henares, and Pamplona, possess the best of Miranda’s works; the patronage of Philip IV. was continued to him by Charles II., and he died at the head of a large school, about 1685.

, a painter, was born at Paris in 1676, where he also died in the month of June 1754. He had for masters in his art Houasse, and afterwards Bon Boullogne. He obtained the grand prize of painting in 1699, and was received member of the academy in 1704. Cases may be considered as one of the first painters of the French school. His drawing is correct, and in the grand style, his compositions bear marks of genius; he excels in draperies, and possesses a knowledge of the chiaroscuro to a very high degree. His strokes are mellow, and his pencil brilliant. There is much freshness in his tints. This famous artist worked with great industry; but his performances are not all of equal beauty. Towards the latter end of his life, the coldness of age and the weakness of his organs, occasioned him to produce pictures which betray the decline of his powers. Some of his works may be seen at Paris, in the church of Notre Dame, in the college of Jesuits, at the house of charity, at the petit St. Antoine, at the chapel of la Jussienne, at the abbey of St. Martin, and particularly at St. Germain-des. Prs, where he has represented the lives of St. Germain and of St. Vincent. A holy family at St. Louis de Versailles, is much admired, and is one of his best productions. Cases mostly excelled in pictures with horses. The king of Prussia has two fine pieces by this painter, which have been compared for their execution with the works of Correggio. The celebrated Le Moine was a scholar of Cases.

, called Nicoletto, a Venetian, artist, was born at Venice in 1659, and was the eldest son, and disciple of John Francis Cassana, a Genoese, who had been taught the art of painting by Bernardino Strozzi, and under his direction became an eminent portraiupainter; and the grand duke of Tuscany invited him to his court, where he painted the portraits of that prince and the princess Violante his consort. Of the historical subjects painted by this master while he resided at Florence, perhaps the most considerable was the Conspiracy of Catiline it consisted of nine figures as large as life, down to the knees; and the two principal figures were represented, as with one hand joined in the presence of their companions, and in their other hand holding a cup of blood. Nicoletto was invited to England, with strong assurances of a generous reception; and on his arrival, painted the portrait of queen Anne, in which he succeeded so happily, that the queen distinguished him by many marks of favour and of honour; but he had not the happiness to enjoy his good fortune for any length of time, dying in London, universally regretted, in the year 1713. He had a younger brother, G. Augustine Cassana, who, though a good portrait- painter, preferred the representation of animals and various fruits his pictures of that class are frequent in the collections of Italy, and sometimes ascribed to Castiglione. He had a sister, Maria Vittoria Cassana, who painted images of devotion for private amateurs, and died at Venice in the beginning of the last century.

, an eminent historical painter, was born at a small village called Castagno, belonging to Tuscany, in 1409, and being deprived of his parents when young, was employed by his uncle to attend the herds of cattle in the fields. His singular talents, which were first manifested in surprising efforts to imitate an ordinary painter, whom he accidentally observed at work, became the common topic of discourse in Florence, and excited the curiosity of Bernardetto de Medici, who perceiving that he had promising talents, placed him under the tuition of the best masters at that time in Florence. Andrea, assiduously improving his advantages, became particularly eminent in design, and found full employment. At first he painted only in distemper and fresco, with a manner of colouring that was not very agreeable, being rather hard and dry; but at length he learned the secret of painting in oil from Domenico Venetiano, who had derived his knowledge of it from Antonella da Messina. He was the first of the Florentine artists who painted in oil but envying the merit of Domenico, from whom he obtained the secret, and whose works were more admired than his own, he determined, with the basest ingratitude, to assassinate his friend and benefactor. At this time Domenico and Andrea lived together, and were partners in business. Insensible, however, of every obligation, and combining treachery with ingratitude, he way -laid Domenico in the corner of a street, and stabbed him with such secrecy, that he escaped unobserved and unsuspected to Jiis own house, where he sat down with apparent composure to work; soon after Domenico was conveyed thither to die in the arms of his assassin. The real author of this atrocious act was never discovered, till Andrea, through remorse of conscience, disclosed it on his death-bed, in 1480. Andrea finished several considerable works at Florence, by which he gained great wealth and reputation; but as soon as his complicated villainy became public, his memory was afterwards held in the utmost detestation. The most noted of his works is in the hall of justice at Florence, and represents the execution of the conspirators against the house of Medici.

, an eminent painter of history and portrait, was born at Genoa in 1557, and studied under Andrea Semini ancT Luca Cambiaso, preferring the principles of the first, though in his practice he imitated both, and afterwards visited Rome for farther improvement. He invented with facility, and when he chose to exert himself, he had sufficient correctness and grace; but he became a mannerist, and frequently adopted the colour and dispatch of Vasari and Zucchari. The most distinguished poets of his time, whose portraits he painted, and who celebrated him in their verses, particularly Marino and Tasso, were his intimate friends; and he made designs for the “Jerusalem” of the latter. The subject of his altar-piece for St. Peter’s at Rome was the call of St. Peter to the apostleship; which was afterwards removed to make room for one executed by Lanfranco. As an engraver, Strutt says, his style somewhat resembled that of Cornelius Bus. Among other works in this department is the set of prints for Tasso’s Jerusalem. He died in 1629.

, an eminent artist, the companion of Luca Cambiaso, is commonly called il Bergamasco, in contradistinction of Gio. Bat. Castelli a Genoese, scholar of Cambiaso, and -the most celebrated miniature-painter of his time. This, born at Bergamo in 1500, and conducted to Genoa by Aurelio Buso of Crema, a scholar of Polidoro, was at his sudden departure left by him in that city. In this forlorn state, he found a Maecenas in the Pallavicini family, who assisted him, sent him to Rome, and received in him at his return an architect, sculptor, and painter not inferior to Cambiaso. At Rome, Palomino numbers him with the scholars of Michael Angelo. Whatever master he may have had, his technic principles were those of Luca; which is evident on comparison in the church of S. Matteo, where they painted together. We discover the style of Raffaello verging already to practice, but not so mannered as that which prevailed at Rome under Gregory and Sixtus. We recognize in Cambiaso a greater genius and more elegance of design, in Castello more diligence, deeper knowledge, a better colour, a colour nearer allied to the Venetian than the Roman school. It may however be supposed^ that in such fraternal harmony each assisted the other, even in those places where they acted as competitors, where each claimed his work, and distinguished it by his name. Thus at the Nunziata di Portoria, Luca on the panneis represented the final doom of the blessed and the rejected in the last judgment; whilst G. Batista on the ceiling, expressed the judge in an angelic circle, receiving the elect. His attitude and semblance speak the celestial welcome with greater energy than the adjoined capitals of the words, “Venite Benedicti.” It is a picture studied in all its parts, of a vivacity, a composition, and expression, which give to the pannels of Luca, the air of a work done by a man half asleep. Frequently he painted alone; such are the S. Jerome surrounded by monks frightened at a lion, in S. Francesco di Castello, and the crowning of St, Sebastian after martyrdom, in his own church, a picture as rich in composition as studied in execution, and superior to all praise. That a man of such powers should have been so little known in Italy, rouses equal indignation and pity, unless we suppose that his numerous works in fresco at Genoa prevented him from painting for galleries.

This artist passed the last years of his life at Madrid, as painter to the court. After his death in 1570, or, as some say 1580, Luca Cambiaso was sent for to finish the larger historic subjects; but the ornamental parts and the grotesques interspersed with figures remained to his two sons^ Fabrizio and Granello, whom he had carried with him to Spain as his assistants. Palomino, and the writers on the Escurial, enumerate these works, with praise of their variety, singularity, and beauty of colour.

, a Spanish painter, was born at Cordova, in 1603, and after the death of his father, Augustine Castillo, whose disciple he was, repaired to Seville for the purpose of improving himself in the school of Francis Zurbaran. Being returned to his native country, he acquired great reputation by his works; which was so well established, that even at this day no one is considered as a man of taste who does not possess some piece by this great artist. He treated history, landscape, and portrait, with equal success. His drawing is excellent; but his colouring is deficient in graces and taste. It is said, that, on his return to Seville, he was seized with such a fit of jealousy at seeing the pictures of the young Murello of a freshness and colouring much superior to his, that he died of vexation shortly after his return to Cordova, in 1667. He once marked one of his pictures with the whimsical inscription: “Non pinxit Alfaro,” to ridicule the vanity of that pupil, noted as the most conceited artist of his day, who nerer suffered a picture to escape his hand without stamping it with the words “Alfaro pinxit.” The best works of Castillo are at Cordova.

Catherine II. had been handsome in her youth; and at the age of seventy years she preserved some remains of beauty, connected with a peculiar gracefulness and majesty. Her stature was of the middle size, somewhat corpulent, but well proportioned; and as she carried her head very high, and raised her neck, she appeared very tall; she had an open front, an aquiline nose, an agreeable mouth, and her chin, though long, was not misshapen. Her hair was auburn, her eye-brows black (brown, says Rulhiere), and rather thick; and her blue eyes (animated hazle eyes, says Rulhiere, discovering shades of blue), indicated a gentleness which was often aiFected, but more frequently a mixture of pride. Haughtiness, says Rulhiere, was the true character of her physiognomy. The grace and kindness which were likewise visible in it, seemed, to the penetrating observer, only the effect of an extreme desire of pleasing; and these seducing expressions manifested too perceptibly even the design of seducing. A painter, desirous of expressing this character by an allegory, proposed to represent her under the figure of a charming nymph, who, with one hand extended, presents wreaths of flowers, and in the other, which she holds behind her, conceals a lighted torch. The empress was usually dressed in the Russian manner. She wore a green gown (green being the favourite colour with the Russians), somewhat short, forming in front a kind of vest, and with close sleeves reaching to the wrist. Her hair, slightly powdered, flowed upon her shoulders, topped with a small cap covered with diamonds. In the latter years of her life she used much rouge; for she was still desirous of preventing the impressions of time from being visible in her countenance; and she always practised the strictest temperance, making a light breakfast and amoderate dinner, and never eating any supper. In her private life, the good humour and confidence with which she inspired all about her, seemed to keep her in perpetual youth, playfulness, and gaiety. Her engaging conversation and familiar manners placed all those who had constant access to her, or assisted at her toilette, perfectly at their ease; but the moment when she had put on her gloves to make her appearance in the neighbouring apartments, she assumed a sedate demeanour, and a very different countenance. From being an agreeable and facetious woman, she appeared all at once the reserved and majestic empress. A person, who then saw her, would spontaneously pronounce, “This is indeed the Setniramis of the north.” Her mode of saluting was dignified and graceful; by a slight inclination of the body, not without grace, but with a smile at command, that came and vanished with the bow.

, an Italian painter, was born at Rome in 1279, and became the disciple of Giotto. He rendered himself very considerable by a multitude of paintings which he finished, to the number (as some writers assert) of 1300; and he was also as remarkable for his piety, having on that account been esteemed as a saint. His principal works are at Rome, where he assisted Giotto in that celebrated picture in Mosaic, which is over the grand entrance into the church of St. Peter; and in St. Paul’s there is a crucifix, said to be by his hand, which the superstitious affirm to have miraculously talked to St. Bridget. But his best performance in fresco was in the church of Ara Cceli at Rome; in which he represented the Virgin and Child above, surrounded with glory, and below was the figure of the emperor Octavian, and also that of the sybil, directing the eye and the attention of the emperor to the figures in the air.

, an historical artist, was born at Sassuolo, near Modena, in 1580, and was educated in the academy of the Caracci, where he learned design; but he frequently attended the schools of Baldi and Passerotti, to study after the naked. Yet to acquire a proper knowledge of colouring, he visited Venice, and carefully examined the productions of Titian; and at. his return to his own country, the best judges of the art of painting were much pleased with his works, as they seemed to possess an agreeable mixture of the style of the Caracci, and the tints of Titian. For some time, at Bologna, the works of Cavedone were esteemed equal to the compositions of Annibale; and it is recorded, that in the king of Spain’s chapel there is a “Visitation of the Virgin,” which Rubens, Velasquez, and Michel Angelo Colonna, supposed to be the performance of Annibale Caracci, although it was really the work of Cavedone; nor could there be a more honourable testimony in favour of this master. His best manner was strong and free, and the tints of his colouring were natural and beautiful; but by those who have judiciously considered his works, it is observed that this painter had three different manners at three different periods of his life that of the first was excellent the second but indifferent and his last was feeble, and miserably ba.d. for, in the latter part of his life he was depressed by sickness and extreme poverty; and a few years before his death, he received a violent shock by the fall of a scaffold, while he was painting; and his unhappiness was completed by the death of his only son, who had given strong proofs of a promising genius.

, a Spanish artist, the son of Patrizio Caxes, of Arezzo, who settled in Spain, was born at Madrid in 1577, and learned the art of his father, with whom he was employed by Philip III. in the palace del Pardd. Their chief work in the queen’s gallery there, was the story of “Joseph and Potiphar’s wife,” which perished with many other works of art in the fire which consumed that palace. The father died in 1625, before which his son had attained high favour and eminence. The excellence of his frescos in the Sala d' Udienza procured him the favour of Philip III. who appointed him painter to the court in 1612. He soon after painted one of the principal altar-pieces for the church de la Merced at Madrid; and in 1615, various pictures in company with Vinzenzio Caoducho in the cathedral of Toledo and elsewhere. Though, his pencil, in common^with his contemporaries, was chiefly devoted to church legends, he found means to paint the “History of Agamemnon” in the Alcazar at Madrid. His scholars were, Luis Fernandez of Madrid, who painted the life of S. Ramori in the cloisters of La Merced Calzada, a celebrated series; Juan de Arnau of Barcellona; and Don Pedro de Valpuesta of Burgo de Osma, a young man of education, who probably would have excelled his fellow-scholars, had he not entered the church, in which he arrived at the dignity of licentiate. Caxes died in 1642.

From the Levant he was recalled in February 1717, by the tenderness of his mother, and from that time he never left France, unless to make two excursions to London. The countess de Caylus died in 1729, aged fifty-six. When the count settled at Paris, he applied himself to music, drawing, and painting. He wrote, too, some works of the lighter kind, but it was chiefly for the amusement of his friends; in these he discovered spirit and ingenuity, but did not aim at correctness or elegance of style. In order to judge of the works of art, he had taste, that instinct, says his eulogist, superior to study, surer than reasoning, and more rapid than reflection. With one glance of his eye, he %vas able to discover the defects and the beauties of every piece. The academy of painting and sculpture admitted him as an honorary member in 1731, and the count, who loved to realize titles, spared neither his labour, his credit, nor his fortune, to instruct, assist, and animate the artists. He wrote the lives of the most celebrated painters ^ind engravers that have done honour to this illustrious academy; and in order to extend the limits of the art, which seemed to him to move in too narrow a circle, he collected in three different works, new subjects for the painter, which he had met with in the works of the ancients. One of these, entitled “Tableaux tire’s de L‘lliade, et de L’Odysse d'Homere,” published in 1757, is mentioned by Dr. Warton in his “Essay on Pop,” in terms of praise. In this he has exhibited the whole series of events contained in these poems, arranged in their proper order has designed each piece, and disposed each figure with much taste and judgment. He seems justly to wonder, that artists have so seldom had recourse to this great store-house of beautiful and noble images, so proper for the employment of their pencils, and delivered with so much force and distinctness, that the painter has nothing to do but to substitute his colours for the words of Homer. He complains that a haphael, and a Julio Romano, should copy thr crude and unnatural conceptions of Ovid’s Metamorpnoses, and Apuleius’s Ass; and that some of their sacred subjects were ill-chosen. Among the lew who borrowed their subjects from Homer, he mentions Bouchardon with the honour he deserves, and relates the anecdote which we have already given in the life of that sculptor.

, an eminent painter, called M. A. DI Battague, from his excellence in painting battles, and Bambocciate, from his turn for painting markets, fairs, &c. was born at Rome in 1600, or 1602. His father, a jeweller, perceiving his disposition to the art, placed him with James d'As6, a Flemish painter, then in credit at Rome; after three years study with him, he went to the school of P. P. Cortonese, whom he quitted to become the disciple and imitator of Bamboccio. He surpassed all his fellow-students in taste, and had a manner of painting peculiar to himself. His chearful temper appeared in his pictures, in which ridicule was strongly represented. The facility of his pencil was such, that on the recital of a battle, a shipwreck, or any uncommon figure, he could express it* directly on his canvas. His colouring was vigorous, and his touch light. He never made designs or sketches, but only re-touched his pictures until he hud brought them to all the perfection of which he was capable. Such was his reputation that he could hardly supply the commissions he received, and he became so rich that the cares of wealth began to perplex him. He on one occasion took all his wealth to a retired place in order to bury it, but when he arrived, was so alarmed lest it should be found, that he brought it back, with much trouble, and having been two nights and a day without sleep or sustenance, this, it is said, injured his health, and brought on a violent fever which proved fatal in 1660. His personal character is highly praised. Mr. Fuseli says, that he differs from Bamboccio in the character and physiognomy of his figures; instead of Dutch or Flemish mobs, he painted those of Italy. Both artists have strongand vivid tints; Bamboccio is superior to him in landscape, and he excelis Bamboccio in the spirit of his figures. One of his most copious works is in the palace Spada at Rome, in which he has represented an arrny df fanatic Lazzaroni, who shout applause to Masaniello.

, a painter of Cordova, acquired fame in the sixteenth century, both in Spain and Italy. His manner approaches somewhat to that of Correggio; the same exactness in the drawing, the same force in the expression, the same vigour in the colouring. It is impossible to contemplate without emotion his picture of the Last Supper in the cathedral of Cordova; where each of the apostles presents a different character of respect and affection for their master; the Christ displays at once an air of majesty and kindness; and the Judas a false and malignant countenance. The talents of Cespedes were not confined to painting, if we may trust the enthusiasm of the Spanish authors in his behalf; he was at the same time philosopher, antiquary, sculptor, architect; an adept in the Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Italian languages, a great poet, and a prolific author. He died in 1608, aged upwards of seventy.

, another brother of the preceding, was a commoner of Brazen-nose college in Oxford, and afterwards studied in the inns of court. He was a man of great learning, and distinguished himself as an antiquary, as also by writing the History of the Isle of Man, a manuscript copy of which was in the valuable museum of Mr. Thoresby, of Leeds, and afterwards bought by Edmondson, but it has been also printed at the end of King’s “Vale Royal of Cheshire,” in 1656. He was likewise a member of the Long Parliament, deep in the transactions of those times, and one of the king’s judges; for which, at the restoration, he was excepted from the benefit of his estate, but his life spared; and this distinction seems to have been owing to his not having, signed the warrant for the king’s death, which his brother Thomas did. He married Ursula, daughter of sir William Fairfax, of Seeton, in the county of York, and dying in 1661, was succeeded in his estate by his only son Edmund. Wood says he poisoned himself, when a search was making for him. One James Chaloner made collections of arms, &c. in the city of Chester, which, Mr. Gough informs us, came into Vincent’s hands; but this perhaps is one of the three Chaloners who were herald-painters of that city, and no wise related to sir Thomas Chaloner’s family, although in a late history of Chester, 1791, James the herald-painter is said to be the author of the History of the Isle of Man. Mr. Gough also informs us that the author of that history made collections of arms, monuments, &c. in Shrophire, which in 1700 were in the Heralds’ office, numbered 2 So among Vincent’s books; but they were purloined from thence (probably when lord Oxford was collecting his library, and gave any price for Mss.), and are now in the British Museum, No. 2163, Harl. Cat. But it appears from other parts of the British Topography, that even Mr. Gough has not always kept in view the distinction between the two James Chaloners.

, a celebrated painter, was born at Brussels in 1602. He discovered an inclination to painting from his youth; and owed but little to masters for the perfection he attained in it, excepting that he learned landscape from Fouquiere. In all other branches of his art nature was his master, and he is said to have followed her very faithfully. At nineteen years of age he set off for Italy, taking France in his way; but he proceeded, as it happened, no farther than Paris, and lodged in the college pf Laon, where Poussin also dwelt; and these two painters became very good friends. Du Chesne, painter to queen Mary of Medicis, was employed about the paintings in the palace of Luxembourg, and set Poussin and Champagne at work under him. Poussin did a few small pieces in the cieling, and Champagne drew some small pictures in the queen’s apartment. Her majesty liked them so well, that du Chesne grew jealous, of him; upon which Champagne, who loved peace, returned to Brussels, with an intent to go through Germany into Italy. He was scarcely got there, when a letter came to him from the abbot of St. Ambrose, who was surveyor of the buildings, to advertise him of du Chesne’s death, and to invite him back to France. He accordingly returned thither, and was presently made director of the queen’s paintings, who settled on him a yearly pension of 1200 livres, and allowed him lodgings in the palace of Luxembourg. Being a lover of his business, he went through a great deal of it. There are a vast number of his pieces at Paris, and other parts of the kingdom: and among other places, some of his pictures are to be seen in the chapter-house of Notre-dame at Paris, and in several churches in that city; without reckoning an infinity of portraits, which are noted for their likeness, as well as for being finished to a very high degree. The queen also ordered him to paint the vault of the Carmelites, church in the suburbs of St. James, where his crucifix is much esteemed: but the best of his works is thought to be his cieling in the king’s apartment at Vincennes, composed on the subject of the peace in 1659. After this hi. 1 was made rector of the royal academy of painting, which office he exercised many years.

He had been a long while famous in his profession, when le Brun arrived at Paris from Italy; and, though le Brun was soon at the head of the art, and made principal painter to the king, he shewed no disgust at the preference that was given to his detriment and loss. There is another instance upon record of Champagne’s goodness of disposition and integrity. Cardinal Richelieu had offered to make his fortune, if he would quit the queen-mother’s service; but Champagne refused. The cardinal’s chief valet-de-chambre assured him farther, that whatever he would ask, his eminency would grant him to which Champagne replied, “if the cardinal could make me a better painter, the only thing I am ambitious of, it would be something but since that was impossible, the only honour he begged of his eminency was the continuance of his good graces.” It is said, the cardinal was highly affected with the integrity of the painter; who, though he refused to enter into his service, did not however refuse to work for him. Among other things he drew his picture, and it is supposed to be one of the best pieces he ever painted. Sir Robert Strange had his portrait of Colbert, which he thought claimed a rank with the finest of Vandyke’s.

Champagne died in 1674, having been much beloved by all that knew him, both as a good painter and a good man. He had a son and two daughters by his wife, du Chesne’s daughter, whom he married after her father’s death: but two of these children dying before him, and the third retiring to a nunnery (for she was a daughter), he left his substance to John Baptiste de Champagne, his nephew. John Baptiste was also born at Brussels, and bred up in the profession of painting under his uncle; whose manner and gusto he always followed, though he spent fifteen months in Italy. He lived in the most friendly and affectionate manner with his uncle, and died professor of the academy of painting- at Paris, in 1688, aged 42 years.

His next publication arose from his connection with the Dilletanti, a society so called, composed originally (in 1734) of some gentlemen who had travelled in Italy, and were desirous of encouraging at home a taste for those objects which had contributed so much to their entertainment abroad. On a report of the state of this society’s finances in 1764, it appeared that they were in possession of a considerable sum above what their current services required. Various schemes were proposed for applying part of this money to some purpose which might promote taste, and do honour to the society; and after some consideration it was resolved, that persons properly qualified should be sent, with sufficient appointments, to certain parts of the east, to collect information relative to the former state of those countries, and particularly to procure exact descriptions of the ruins of such monuments of antiquity as are yet to be seen in those parts. Three persons were accordingly selected for this undertaking; Mr. Chandler was appointed to execute the classical part of the plan; the province of architecture was assigned to Mr. Revett; and the choice of a proper person for taking views and copying bas-reliefs, fell upon Mr. Pars, a young painter of promising talents.

These gentlemen embarked June 9, 1764, on board a ship bound for Constantinople; and were landed at the Dardanelles on the 25th of August. Having visited the Sigean promontory, the ruins of Troas, with the islands of Tenedos and Scio they arrived at Smyrna on the 11th of September, and from that city, as their head-quarters, they made several excursions. In August 1765, they arrived at Athens where they staid till June 1766“; visiting Marathon, Eleasis, Salamis, Megara, and other places in the neighbourhood. Leaving Athens, they proceeded by the little island of Calauna, to Traszene, Epidaurus,Argos, and Corinth. Thence they visited Delphi, Patrae, Elis, and Zante and on the 31st of August they set sail for Bristol, and arrived in England November 2, following. The result of this tour was published in 1769, under the title of” Ionian Antiquities, published with permission of the society of Dilletanti. By R. Chandler, M. A. F. S. A. N. Revett, architect, and W. Pars, painter.' 7 Imp. fol. a volume which while it did honour to the society, amply justified the expectations formed of the talents employed.

, a painter, engraver, and designer of great talents and industry, was born at Paris in 1613) and died there in 1676. His first performances were some engravings from the pictures of Laurence de la Hire, who was his master; but the liveliness of his imagination not comporting with the tardiness of the graving tool, he began to delineate his own thoughts in aquafortis. If his works have not the delicacy and mellowness that distinguish the engravings of some other artists, yet he threw into them all the fire, all the force and sentiment of which his art is susceptible. He worked with surprising facility. His children used to read to him after supper the passages of history he intended to draw. He instantly seized the most striking part of the subject, traced the design of it on the plate of copper with the point of his graver; and, before he went to bed, fitted it for being corroded by the aquafortis the next day, while he employed himself in engraving or drawing something else. He supplied not only painters and sculptors with designs, but also carvers and goldsmiths, jewellers and embroiderers, and even joiners and smiths. Besides 4000 pieces engraved by his hand, and 1400 executed from his designs, he painted several small pictures, which were much admired, and many of them were purchased by Le Brun. The multitude of works on which he was employed brought their authors to his house, and their frequent meetings and conversations there terminated in the establishment of the French academy. He was admitted into the royal academy of painting and sculpture in 1663, and obtained a pension farengraving the plates of the Carousal. His small plates, Mr. Strutt says, are executed in a style much resembling that of Le Clerc, founded upon that of Callot. In his large prints he approaches near to that coarse, dark style, which was adopted by his tutor, La Hire. Among the sets of prints executed from his own compositions, are those for the “Bible History” the “History of Greece” the “Metamorphosis of Benserade” the “Jerusalem of Tasso” the “Fables of La Fontaine” “Alaric,” or “Rome conquered” and several romances. Among the prints engraved from other masters are, “Christ with the Disciples at Emmaus,” from Titian a “Concert,” from Dominichino; the “Life of St. Bruno,” from Le Sueur; “Apollo and Daphne,” from N. Poussin; “A Virgin and Child, with St. John and little Angels,” finely etched, and finished with much taste; and “Meleager presenting the Head of the Boar to Atalanta.” With all his talents and fame, Perrault assures us that he was a man of great modesty.

, daughter of Henry Cheron, a painter in enamel, of the town of Meaux, was born at Paris in 1648, studied under her father, and at the age of fourteen had acquired a name. The celebrated Le Brun in 1676 presented her to the academy of painting and sculpture, which complimented her talents by admitting her to the title of academician. This ingenious lady divided her time between painting, the learned languages, poetry, and music. She drew on a large scale a great number of gems, a work in which she particularly excelled. These pictures were no less admirable for a good taste in drawing, a singular command of pencil, a fine style of colouring, and a superior judgment in the chiaroscuro. The various manners in painting were all familiar to her. She excelled in history, in oil-colours, in miniature enamels, in portrait painting, and especially in those of females. It is said that she frequently executed the portraits of absent persons, merely from memory, to which she gave as strong a likeness as if the persons had sat to her. The academy of Ricovrati at Padua honoured her with the surname of Erato, and gave her a place in their society. She died at Paris, Sept. 3, 1711, at the age of 63, two years after she had been induced to marry M. La Hay, engineer to the king, who was also advanced in years. Strutt says she amused herself with engraving. Of the gems which she designed, three were etched by herself, viz. Bacchus and Ariadne, Mars and Venus, and Night scattering her poppies. She also engraved a “Descent from the Cross,” and a “Drawing-book,” consisting of 36 prints in folio.

Lord Clarendon’s character of him, however, appears superior to any given by those who had no personal knowledge of Chillingworth. “Mr. Chillingworth,” says that admirable portrait-painter, "was of a stature little superior to Mr. Hales, (and it was an age in which there were many great and wonderful men of that size) and a man of so great a subtilty of understanding, and so rare a temper in debate, that as it was impossible to provoke him into any passion, so it was very difficult to keep a man’s self from being a little discomposed by his sharpness, and quickness of argument, and instances, in which he had a rare facility, and a great advantage over all the men I ever knew. He had spent all his younger time in disputation; and had arrived to so great a mastery, as he was inferior to no man in those skirmishes; but he had, with his notable perfection in this exercise, contracted such an irresolution, and habit of doubting, that by degrees he grew confident of nothing, and a sceptic at least, in the greatest mysteries of faith.

, another renowned painter, was born at Florence in 1240, and was the first who revived the art of painting in Italy. Being descended of a noble family, and of sprightly parts, he was sent to school to study the belles lettres, but he generally betrayed his natural bias by drawing figures upon paper, or on his books. The fine arts having been extinct in Italy, ever since the irruption of the barbarians, the senate of Florence had sent at that time for painters out of Greece. Cimabue was their first disciple, and used to elope from school and pass whole days in viewing their work. His father, therefore, agreed with these Greeks to take him under their care, and he soon surpassed them both in design and colouring. Though he wanted the art of managing his lights and shadows, was but little acquainted with the rules of perspective, and in other particulars but indifferently accomplished, yet the foundation which he laid for future improvement, entitled him to the name of the “father of the first age, or infancy of modern painting.”

Cimabue was also a great architect as well as painter, and concerned in the fabric of Sancta Maria del Fior in Florence during which employment he died in 1300. He left many disciples, and among the rest Giotto, who proved an excellent master, and was his first rival. Dante mentions him in the eleventh canto of his purgatory as without a rival till Giotto appeared. Cimabue’s portrait, by Simon Sanese, was in the chapel-house of Sancta Maria Novella. It is a figure which has a lean face, a little red beard, in point; with a capuche, or monk’s hood upon his head, after the fashion of those times.

, properly Claude Gele'I;, an inimitable landscape painter, was born at Lorraine in 1600, and served an apprenticeship to the trade of a pastry-cook. In the early part of his life he shewed no symptoms of- that astonishing genius, which in his more advanced years attracted the admiration of the world. He was very little indebted to any master for instruction, except Agostino Tassi, who had been a disciple of Paul Bril, and with great labour taught Claude some of the rules of perspective, and the method of preparing his colours. But although at first be could with difficulty comprehend the rudiments y of the art, yet in the progress of his instructions his rnind seemed to expand; his ideas improved; his imagination became more lively; and with wonderful eagerness he applied himself to his studies. During these he explored the true principles of painting, by an incessant examination of nature, usually studying in the open fields, where he very frequently continued frofn sun-rise till the dusk of the evening. There he sketched whatever he thought beautiful or striking; and every curious tinge of light, on all kinds of objects, he marked in his sketches with a similar colour; from which he gave his landscapes such an appearance of nature and truth, as has rarely been discovered in any artist that ever painted in that style. Sandrart relates, that Claude used to explain to him, as they walked through the fields, the causes of the different appearances of the same prospect at different hours of the day, from the reflections or refractions of light, from dews or vapours, in the evening or morning, with all the precision of a philosopher.

He had a son of both his names, who was born in 1677, studied historical painting under Bon Boulogne, and became a painter of some note, if we can judge from the number of prints engraved from his works. There is an altar picture by him at the abbey church at Paris, representing the death of Ananias. He was made a member of the royal academy of Paris in 1704, and died, aged eighty-six, in 1763. Another of his sons, Laurent Josse le Clerc, was a man of considerable learning, and published three volumes of remarks on Moreri’s Dictionary, which contributed to improve that work, and compiled the “Bibliotheque des Auteurs cites dans le Dictionnaire cle llichelet,” which was printed with it in the Lyons edition, 1729, 3 vols. fol. but omitted in the 4to Amsterdam edition. He wrote several essays in the literary journals of the time, and died May 6, 1736, in the fifty-ninth year of his age.

, a painter who practised his art in England, was born at Osnaburgh in 1656, and with his countryman, one Tiburen, went to Paris in 1679, where he worked for De Troye. In 1681, they came to England, and Closterman at first painted draperies for Riley and afterwards they painted in conjunction, Riley still executing most of the heads. On his death Closterman finished several of his pictures, which recommended him to the duke of Somerset, who had employed Riley. He painted the duke’s children, but lost his favour on a dispute about a picture of Guercino, which he had bought for liis grace, and which was afterwards purchased by lord Hnlifax. Closterman, however, did nof want business. He drew Gibbons the carver and his wife in one piece, which pleased, and there is a mezzotinto from it. He was even set in competition with sir Godfrey Kneller, and there is a story, not very credible, that sir Godfrey refused to paint a picture with him for a wager. Closterman painted the duke and duchess of Marlborough and all their children in one picture, and the duke on horseback; on which subject, however, he had so many disputes with the duchess, that the duke said, “It has given me more trouble to reconcile my wife and you, than to fight a battle.” Closterman, who sought reputation, went by invitation to Spain in 1696, where he drew the king and queen, and from whence he wrote several letters on the pictures in that country to Mr, Richard Graham. He also went twice to Italy, anil brought over several good pictures. The whole length of queen Anne in Guildhall is by him, and another at Chatsworth of the first duke of Rutland; and in Painters’-hall, ti portrait of Mr. Sannders. Elsum has bestowed an epigram on his portrait of Dryden; yet Closterman was a very moderate performer: his colouring strong, but heavy; and his pictures without any idea of grace. Yet he might have enjoyed very affluent circumstances, had he not shewn a foolish and infatuated fondness (as Houbraken tells us) for a girl that he kept in his house. That insidious young woman, who had persuaded him that she was entirely attached to his person and interest, watched a proper opportunity, and robbed him of all his money, plate, jewels, and every costly moveable, and fled out of the kingdom. So sudden and so unexpected a misfortune, against which he was totally unprepared, affected Closterman so violently, that he pined away his life; not long surviving the loss of his effects, and the infidelity of his mistress, which even impaired his understanding. He died in 1713, and was buried in Cbvent-garden churchyard.

, justly celebrated for his astonishing miniatures and illuminations in missals and other religious books, was born in Sclavonia in the year 1498. He was originally educated for the church, and took orders, but was afterwards suffered to relinquish the sacerdotal habit by a dispensation from the pope. Soon after the age of eighteen, his love of painting prompted him to travel to Rome, where he was taken into the service of the cardinal Grimani, by whom he was, for the space of three years, employed in making careful pen-drawings from the finest medals. He afterwards became the scholar of Julio Romano, and made considerable advancement in oil-painting; but his master, perceiving the extraordinary talent which he evinced for miniature, succeeded in persuading him to apply himself entirely to that branch of the art; and' it may with justice be said, that we owe to the sagacity of Julio Romano, and the unexampled assiduity of Clovio, the most exquisite and delicately finished performances of that kind in the known world; since he not only far surpassed all who went before him, but to this day stands unrivalled, by all those who have since attempted to walk in his footsteps. In addition to the instruction which our artist received from the favourite scholar of Raffaele, he derived great benefit from the works of Buonarotti, many of which he copied in a most beautiful and finished manner; and he afterwards reaped great advantage from the friendship and experience of Girolamo da 1 Libri, a miniature painter of great note at Verona: the result of all these studies was a style of drawing, partaking of the purity of the Roman, and the grandeur of the Florentine school; united, not unfrequently, to the rich colouring of Titian or the ambient hue of Correggio.

, a Scotch artist, was born Dec. 12, 1738, at Strathaven in Clydesdale, Having early shewn a genius in design, he was put as a scholar to the academy ofpainting in the college of Glasgow in 1754 then chiefly under the inspection of those eminent printers Messrs. Robert and Andrew Fonlis. After some time spent there, he went to Italy about the end of 1764, where he studied for five years, mostly at Rome, under the celebrated Mr. Gavin Hamilton; since which time he followed his profession in Glasgow, with honour and advantage to himself, and satisfaction to his friends. In portrait painting of a large size he excelled, and in miniature and other sizes he had great merit; his drawing was correct, and he seldom failed of producing a most striking likeness. In history, some pieces done by him are now in Glasgow, particularly “Daedalus and Icarus,” “Diana and Endymion,” both essay pieces executed at Rome, that would do credit to any pencil; yet, from an unusual modesty and diffidence, he never could be prevailed upon to put his name to his works. A dutiful attachment to an aged mother and other relations fixed him in Glasgow: ambition with him was no ruling passion, nor was he eager after riches; but a natural philanthropic disposition, and an assiduity to please, were conspicuous traits of his character. By permission 1 of the lord provost and magistrates, he was buried in the choir of the cathedral church, where a neat marble is erected to his memory, with this inscription “In memory of Mr. William Cochran, portrait painter in Glasgow, who died October 23, 1785, aged 47 years. The works of his pencil and this marble bear record of an eminent artist, and a virtuous man.”

, called likewise P. Van Aelst, from the place of his nativity, a town in Flanders, was, if we may judge from the writers who have spoken of him, or from the admirable prints remaining from his designs, one of the greatest painters which either Germany or Flanders produced in his age. After he had been some time instructed in the school of Bernard of Brussels, he went to Rome to complete his studies, and soon proved himself an excellent designer, and a bold and spirited painter, as well in fresco as in oil. At his return to his own country he married, but his wife soon dying, he once more travelled, and at the solicitations of a merchant, a friend of his, accompanied him to Constantinople in 1531. Having stayed some time with the Turks, and drawn some most animated representations of their customs and ceremonies, which he afterwards cut in wood, he once more arrived in the place of his nativity, and took a second wife. Towards the latter part of his life he wrote some excellent treatises upon geometry, architecture, and perspective. His pictures of history, as well as his portraits, were much esteemed. He was made painter to the emperor Charles V. and died at Antwerp in 1550. After his death, the prints which he had made of Turkish costume were published by his widow. This admirable work consists of seven large pieces, which, when joined together, form a frieze, divided into compartments by Cariatides on a tablet in the first block is written in old French “Les moeurs et fachom de faire de Turcz, avecq les regions y appertenantes, ont est au vif contrefaicetze par Pierre Cceck d‘Alost, luy estant en Turque, Tan de Jesu Christ MDXXXIII. lequel aussy de sa main propre a pourtraict ces figures duysantes a Pimpression dy’celles;” and on the last is this inscription: “Marie ver hulst, vefue du diet Pierre d'Alost, tres passe en Tan MDL. a faict imprimer les diet figures, soubz grace et privilege dTimperialle majeste en Tan MCCCCCLIII.” These prints are very rare.

, a very popular artist, was born at Gaeta in 1676. He studied under Solimene, and by persevering practice soon became an able machinist. At little less than forty, the desire of seeing Rome prompted him to visit that city, where he became once more a student, and spent five years in drawing after the antique and the masters of design: but his hand, debauched by manner, refused to obey his mind, till wearied by hopeless fatigue, he followed the advice of the sculptor le Gros, and returned to his former practice, though not without considerable improvements, and nearer to Pietro da Cortona than his master. He had fertile brains, a rapid pencil, and a colour which at first sight fascinated every eye by its splendor, contrast, and the delicacy of its flesh tints. His dispatch was equal to his employment, and there is scarcely a collection of any consequence without its Conca. He was courted by sovereigns and princes, and pope Clement XI. made him a cavaliere at a full assembly of the academicians of St. Luke. He died, far advanced in age, in 1764. Sir Robert Strange, in whose possession was a Virgin and Child," by Conca, observes that, with all his defects, he was a great painter, and must be regarded as one of the last efforts which this expiring art made in Italy.

, son of Leo the Wise, was born at Constantinople in 905, and ascended the throne at the age of seven years, under the tutelage of his mother Zoe, the 11th of June 911. No sooner had he taken the reins of government in his hand, than he chastised the tyrants of Italy, took Benevento from the Lombards, and drove off, by means of money, the Turks who were pillaging the frontiers of* Epire; but he afterwards allowed himself to be entirely governed by Helena his wife, daughter of Romanus Lecapenes, grand-admiral of the empire. She sold the dignities of the church and the state, burdened the people with taxes, and exercised towards them every species of oppression, while her husband was employing his time in reading, and became as able an architect and as great a painter as he was a bad emperor. Romanus, the son of this indolent prince by his wife Helena, impatient to govern, caused poison to be mingled with some medicine prescribed to him; but Constantine, having rejected the greater part of it, survived till a year afterwards, and died Nov. 9, 959, at the age of 54, after a reign of 48 years. This prince, the patron of learning, and the friend of the learned, left behind him several works which would have done honour to a private person. The principal of them are 1 The Life of the emperor Basil ins the Macedonian, his grandfather, inserted in the collection of Allatius. It is sometimes deficient in point of truth, and savours too much of the panegyrical. 2. Two books of “Themata,” or positions of the provinces and the towns of the empire, published by father Banduri in the “Imperium Orientale,” Leipsic, 1754, folio. We have few works preferable to this for the geography of the middle ages, particularly as to the state and condition of places as they were in his time. 3. A Treatise on the Affairs of the Empire; in the above-mentioned work of Banduri, containing the origin of divers nations, their forces, their progress, their alliances, their revolutions, and the succession of their sovereigns, with other interesting particulars. 4. “De re llustica,” Cambridge, 1704, 8vo. 5. “Excerpta ex Polybio, Diodoro Siculo,” &c. Paris, 1634, 4to. 6. “Excerpta de legatis, Graec. & Lat.” 1648, fol. making a part of the Byzantine historians. 7. “De caeremoniis aulae Byzantines,” Leipsic, 1751, folio. 8. “A Body of Tactics”, 8vo.

, an eminent English painter, was born in London in 1609, and bred under the care and discipline of Mr. Hoskins, his uncle: but derived the most considerable advantages from his observations on the works of Van Dyck, insomuch that he was commonly styled the Van Dyck in miniature. His pencil was generally confined to ahead only; and indeed below that part he was not always so successful as could be wished. But for a face, and all the dependencies of it, namely the graceful and becoming air, the strength, relievo, and noble spirit, the softness and tender liveliness of flesh and blood, and the looseness and gentle management of the hair, his talent was so extraordinary, that, for the honour of our nation, it may without vanity be affirmed, he was at least equal to the most famous Italians; and that hardly any one of his predecessors has ever been able to shew so much perfection in so narrow a compass. The high prices of his works, and the great esteem in which they were held at Rome, Venice, and in France, were abundant proofs of their great worth, and extended the fame of this master throughout Europe. He so far exceeded his master and uncle Hoskins, that the latter became jealous of him; and finding that the court was better pleased with his nephew’s performances than with his, he took him into partnership with him, but his jealousy increasing, he dissolved it; leaving our artist to set up for himself, and to carry, as he did, most of the business of that time before him. He drew Charles II. and his queen, the duchess of Cleveland, the duke of York, and most of the court: but the two most famous pieces of his were those of Oliver Cromwell, and of one Swingfield. The French king offered Iso/, for the former, but was refused; and Cooper carrying the latter with him to France, it was much admired there, and introduced him into the favour of that court. *He likewise did several large limnings in an unusual size for the court of England; for which his widow received a pension during her life from the crown. This widow was sister to the mother of the celebrated Pope. Answerable to Cooper’s abilities in painting, was his skill in music; and he was reckoned one of the best lutenists, as well as the most excellent limner, of his time. He spent several years of his life abroad, was personally acquainted with the greatest men of France, Holland, and his own country, and by his works was universally known in all parts of Europe. He died at London May 5, 1612, aged 63, and was buried in Pancras church in the fields; where there is a fine marble monument set over him, with a Latin inscription.

, an esteemed painter of portraits and conversations, was born at Antwerp in 1618, and was a disciple of the old David Ryckaert, under whose direction he applied himself diligently to cultivate those promising talents which he possessed, not only by practising the best rules administered to him by his instructor, but also by studying nature with singular attention. He was a great admirer of Vandyck; and fixing on the manner of that great artist as his model, had the happiness of so far succeeding, that next to him he was esteemed equal to any other painter of his time. In the school of Ryckaert, he had been accustomed to paint conversations, and he frequently composed subjects of fancy, like Teniers, Ostade, and his master; and by that habit he introduced a very agreeable style of portrait-painting in a kind of historical conversations, which seemed much more acceptable to persons of taste than the general manner of painting portraits, and procured him great reputation and riches. In that way he composed several fine pictures for Charles I. and likewise several for the archduke Leopold and the prince of Orange; which latter prince, as a mark of respect, presented Coques with a rich gold chain, and a gold medal, on which the bust of that prince was impressed. He died in 1634. He had an excellent pencil; his portraits were well designed, with easy natural attitudes; he disposed the figures in his composition so as to avoid confusion and embarrassment; he gave an extraordinary clearness of colour to his heads and hands; and his touch was free, firm, and broad a circumstance very uncommon in works of a small size.

, born at Paris in 1642, was one of those eminent painters who adorned the age of Louis XIV. His father, who was himself a painter of merit, instructed him with much care. Having gained a prize at the academy, young Corneille was honoured with the king’s pension, and sent to Rome; where the princely generosity of Louis had founded a school for young artists of genius. Here he studied some time; but thinking himself under restraint to the routine of study there established, he gave up his pension, and pursued a plan more suitable to his own inclination. He applied himself to the antique particularly with great care; and in drawing is said to have equalled Carache. In colouring he was deficient; but his advocates say, his deficiency in that respect was solely owing to his having been unacquainted with the nature of colours; for he used many of a changeable nature, which in time lost their effect. Upon his return from Rome, he was chosen a professor in the academy or' Paris; and was employed by the king in all the great works he was carrying on at Versailles and Trianon, where some noble efforts of his genius are to be seen. He died at Paris in 1708.

, sometimes called Laeti, an eminent historical painter, was born in 1490* or 1494. Being descended of poor parents, and educated in an obscure village, he enjoyed none of those advantages which contributed to form the other great painters of that illustrious age. He saw none of the statues of ancient Greece or Rome; nor any of the works of the established schools of Rome and Venice. But nature was his guide; and Corregio was one of her favourite pupils. To express the facility with which he painted, he used to say that he always had his thoughts ready at the end of his pencil.