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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.In cultivating an acquaintance with these additional names, the memorials collected by Vasari; afterwards, on a more extensive scale, by the Cavaliere Ridolfi, in his Lives of the Venetian Painters; and by Boschini, in the Miniere della Pittura, in the Carta del Navegar Pittoresco, and in other works: materials drawn from all parts of the Venetian state-will be of signal advantage to us. No one, it is hoped, will feel displeased at the introduction of the name of Vasari, against whom the historians of the Venetian School were louder in their complaints than even those of the Roman, the Siennese, and the Neapolitan Schools; all whose causes of difference I have elsewhere recounted, adding to them, whenever I found them admissible, my own refutations. These it would be needless now to repeat, in reply to the Venetian writers. I shall merely observe that Vasari bestowed very ample commendations upon the Venetian professors, in different parts of his history, and more particularly in the lives of Carpaccio, of Liberale, and of Pordenone. Let me add that if he was occasionally betrayed into errors, either from want of more correct information, or from a degree of jealousy or spirit of patriotic rivalry, which probably may have secretly influenced him in his opinions, it will be no difficult task in the present enlightened period, to substitute the real names, more exact accounts, and more impartial examinations of the earlier professors of the school.

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