Footnote 5: The Greeks, during the earliest periods, having uniformly represented the Virgin in so rude a style, were always pleased with similar paintings. I state this to remove a very prevalent error, that every Madonna of Greek style, with distended eyes, long fingers, and dark complexion, in the style of that of Pisa, called _Degli Organi_, or those of Cimabue, is to be referred to the remotest dates. Indeed I have seen specimens of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and even eighteenth centuries, particularly in the Classe Museum, in that of Cattaio, and in the palaces of Venetian nobles. One in the possession of the E. E. Signori Giustiniani Recanati, has, notwithstanding its very antique air, red letters inscribed on a gold ground, expressing, CHEIR EMMANOUÊL IEREÔS ..... a ... lx, _Manus Emanuelis Sacerdotis_. an. 1660. From the hand of the same Greek priest, well known to Venetian artists, there are other altar-pieces with a similar inscription; and it is still customary in that city to reproduce specimens of a similar kind, to satisfy the continual inquiries of the Greek merchants. To judge correctly, then, of the age of such images, we must look for other indications besides their design, such as the _letters_, (see vol. i. p. 49), the fashion of the cornice, the method of colouring, or those cherubs, holding a gold crown over the head of the Virgin, in the edges and the folds of whose drapery are imprinted marks of ages nearer to our own.
Nevertheless, the germ of good painting was not wanting, as far as the times permitted it to exist, both in Bologna and throughout Romagna. Malvasia commends one Jacopo Ripanda, who long flourished at Rome, where, as is commemorated by Volterrano, he began to design the bassi-relievi of the Trajan Column; one Ercole, a Bolognese, who somewhat improved the symmetry of the human figure; one Bombologno, a carver of crucifixes, like Simone, but of more refined composition. He more particularly celebrates a Michel di Matteo, or Michel Lambertini; in whose commendation it may be enough to state, that Albano praised one of his pictures, supposed to be in oil, completed in 1443, for the fish-market, and even preferred it for its softness to those of Francia. The few which we still possess in our own times, both at the churches of S. Pietro and S. Jacopo, might be put in competition with the contemporary works of almost any master.