[107] The Vatican alone is sufficient to prove that gold-grounds were still recurred to in the best years of the sixteenth century.
[108] In the life of Giuliano da Majano. They are the first painters of the Neapolitan schools mentioned by him, though with an ambiguity which might induce us to believe that he meant to give them for Tuscany.
[109] In the forty-first sonnet, addressed to King Federigo: "Vedi invitto Signor come risplende," &c.
[110] Some call him Giacomo, some Andria, most, and with greater probability, Bernardo.
[111] See the remarks relative to Antoniello, in the history of Venetian art; but it is in place here to observe on the assertions of the Neapolitan writers, that, if the tradition of a Greek picture in oil at the Duomo of Messina be not fabulous, Antoniello could not have remained ignorant of it. If Colantonio was in possession of oil painting, how is the astonishment to be accounted for, which the method of John ab Eyk excited at Naples? How came the name of an obscure Fleming to fill in a short period all Europe, every prince to solicit his pencil, every painter to submit to his dictates or those of his scholars? Who, on the contrary, who out of Naples or its state, knew then Colantonio? who courted Solario? a man so apt, the son-in-law and scholar of the former, and before of Lippo Dalmasio—how forgot he to learn, or why did he neglect a method they are said to have practised so well, for the vulgar one of distemper? Either they knew nothing of the mystery at all, or in a degree too insignificant to affect the authority of Vasari, and the claims of John ab Eyk and Antoniello.
[112] A. Sabbatini from 1480 to 1545.
[113] 1508 to 1542.
[114] Vasari.
[115] Said to be in 1587.
[116] These two laid the foundation of a History of Neapolitan Art. The transient manner in which Vasari had mentioned Marco in the new edition of his Lives, his silence on many Sienese, and omission of most Neapolitan painters, were probably the causes that provoked the literary opposition of Marco. His pupil, the Notary, furnished him with materials, from the archives and domestic tradition, for the Discourse which he composed in 1569, the year after the edition of Vasari; though it remained in MS. till 1742, when, jointly with the Memoirs of Criscuolo, in the Neapolitan dialect, &c., the greater part of it was, published by Dominici.