s
_grandiosita_, another Agostino for his invention, and another Annibale
for his vigour or his grace.[266]

What has been told of others, happened to Lodovico Caracci in his youth;
he struggled with a mind tardy in its conceptions, so that he gave no
indications of talent; and was apparently so inept as to have been
advised by two masters to be satisfied to grind the colours he ought not
otherwise to meddle with. Tintoretto, from friendship, exhorted him to
change his trade. "This sluggishness of intellect did not proceed,"
observes the sagacious Lanzi, "from any deficiency, but from the depth
of his penetrating mind: early in life he dreaded the ideal as a rock on
which so many of his contemporaries had been shipwrecked." His hand was
not blest with precocious facility, because his mind was unsettled about
truth itself; he was still seeking for nature, which he could not
discover in those wretched mannerists, who, boasting of their freedom
and expedition in their bewildering tastes, which they called the ideal,
relied on the diplomas and honours obtained by intrigue or purchase,
which sanctioned their follies in the eyes of the multitude. "Lodovico,"
says Lanzi, "would first satisfy his own mind on every line; he would
not paint till painting well became a habit, and till habit produced
facility."

Lodovico then sought in other cities for what he could not find at
Bologna. Ho travelled to inspect the works of the elder masters; he
meditated on all their details; he penetrated to the very thoughts of
the great artists, and grew intimate with their modes of conception and
execution. The true principles of art were collected together in his own
mind,--the rich fruits of his own studies,--and these first prompted him
to invent a new school of painting.[267]

Returning to Bologna, he found his degraded brothers in art still
quarrelling about the merits of the old and the new school, and still
exulting in their vague conceptions and expeditious methods. Lodovico,
who had observed all, had summed up his principle in one grand
maxim,--that of combining a close observation of nature with the
imitation of the great masters, modifying both, however, by the
disposition of the artist himself. Such was the simple idea and the
happy project of Lodovico! Every perfection seemed to have been
obtained: the _Raffaeleschi_ excelled in the ideal; the
_Michelagnuoleschi_ in the anatomical; the Venetian and the Lombard
schools in brilli