[80] In the Oretti Correspondence there is a letter from an anonymous writer to Malvasia respecting this painter, who is there called Francesco, and is declared to be Pittore di molta stima. He then painted in Ancona, as appears from letters under his own hand to Malvasia, where he invariably subscribes himself Francesco.
[81] Passeri, Vite de' Pittori, page 363. He was remarkable for being the first to adopt a new style in trees in landscapes, where by a strong character of truth and attention to the forms of the trunk, foliage, and branches, he denoted the particular species he wished to express.
[82] He painted for his studio a landscape enriched with views from the Villa Madama, in which a wonderful variety of trees was introduced. This he preserved for the purpose of supplying himself, as from nature, with subjects for his various pictures, and refused to sell it to the munificent pontiff, Clement IX., although that prince offered to cover it with pieces of gold.
[83] V. Salvator Rosa, sat. iii. p. 79, where he reprehends not only the artists, but also the great, for affording such pictures a place in their collections.
[84] He was the ancestor of the Sig. Giuseppe Rosa, director of the imperial gallery in Vienna, who has given us a catalogue of the Italian and Flemish pictures of that collection, and who will, we hope, add the German. Of this deserving artist he possesses a portrait, engraved in 1789, where we find a list of the various academies that had elected him a member, and these are numerous, and of the first class in Europe. We find him also amongst those masters whose drawings were collected by Mariette; and he is also mentioned in the Lessico Universale delle Belle Arti, edited in Zurich, in 1763.
ROMAN SCHOOL.
FIFTH EPOCH.
The Scholars of Pietro da Cortona, from an injudicious imitation of their Master, deteriorate the art. Maratta and others support it.
It may with equal justice be asserted of the fine arts, as of the belles lettres, that they never long remain in the same state, and that they experience often great changes even in the common period assigned to the life of man. Many causes contribute to this; public calamities, such as I mentioned to have occurred after the death of Raffaello; the instability of the human mind, which in the arts as in dress is guided by fashion and the love of novelty; the influence of particular artists; the taste of the great, who from their selection or patronage of particular masters, silently indicate the path to those artists who seek the gifts of fortune. These and other causes tended to produce the decline of painting in Rome towards the close of the seventeenth century, at a time too when literature began to revive; a clear proof that they are not mutually progressive. This was in a great measure occasioned by the calamitous events which afflicted Rome and the state, about the middle of that century; by the feuds of the nobles, the flight of the Barberini family, and other unfortunate circumstances, which, during the pontificate of Innocent X., as we are informed by Passeri, (p. 321,) rendered the employment of artists very precarious; but more than all the dreadful plague of 1655, under Alexander VII. To this state of decay too the evil passions of mankind contributed in no small degree, and these indeed in all revolutions are among the most active and predominant sources of evil, and often even in a prosperous state of things sow the seeds of future calamities.