The History of Painting in Italy, Vol. 3 (of 6) / From the Period of the Revival of the Fine Arts to the End of the Eighteenth Century

This School would have required no farther illustration from any other pen, had Signor Antonio Zanetti, in his highly esteemed work upon Venetian Painting, included a more ample consideration of the artists of the state, instead of confining his attention wholly to those, whose productions, ornamenting the churches and other public places, had all been completed in the city of Venice alone. He has, nevertheless, rendered distinguished service to any one ambitious of succeeding him, and of extending the same subject beyond these narrower limits; since he has observed the most lucid order in the arrangement of epochs, in the description of styles, in estimating the merits of various painters, and thus ascertaining the particular rank as well as the age belonging to each. Those artists then, whom he has omitted to commemorate, may be easily reduced under one or other of the divisions pointed out by him, and the whole history enlarged upon the plan which he first laid down.

The Ancients.
If in the outset of each school of painting I were to pursue the example held up in the Etruria Pittrice , of introducing the account of its pictures by that of some work in mosaic, I ought here to mention those of Grado, wrought in the sixth century, distinguished by the name of the Patriarch Elia, those of Torcello, and a few other specimens that appeared at Venice, in the islands, and in Terra Firma, produced at periods subsequent to the increase of the edifices, together with the grandeur of the Venetian state. But admitting that these mosaics, like many at Rome, may really be the production of the Greeks; the title of my work, confined as it is to painting, and to the period of its revival in Italy, leads me to be little solicitous respecting those more ancient monuments of the fine arts, remnants of which are to be found scattered here and there, without any series of a school. I shall still, however, occasionally allude to them, according as I find needful, were it only for the sake of illustration and comparison, as I proceed. But such information ought to be sought for in other works; mine professes only to give the history of painting from the period of its revival.