Footnote 13: This worthy writer would appear to have been aware that he sometimes exceeded due bounds. In the course of that work we meet with other expressions highly creditable to Vasari; and it is well known, that having spoken contemptuously of Raffaello, by designating him _boccalaio Urbinate_, the potter of Urbino, because some vases there had been painted from his designs, "he repented of the expression so much as to lead him to erase it from as many copies of the work as he could meet with." _Lett. Pitt._ vol. vii. p. 130.
Dionisio Calvart, born at Antwerp, and hence also called Dionisio the Fleming, came, when young, into Bologna, and displayed some ability in landscape painting. In order to become a figure painter, he entered first the school of Fontana, and next that of Sabbatini, whom he greatly assisted in his labours for the Vatican. But after quitting also this master, and occupying himself, some little time, in designing from Raffaello's pictures, he returned to Bologna, opened a studio, and there educated as many as a hundred and thirty-seven masters in the art, some of whom were excellent. He was a fine artist for his age; understood perspective well, which he acquired from Fontana, and designed both correctly and gracefully in the taste of Sabbatini. He moreover possessed the art of colouring, in the taste of his own countrymen, a quality which induced the Bolognese to regard him as a restorer of their school, which in this branch of painting had declined. If there were some degree of mannerism in his style, some action in his figures too little dignified, or too extravagant; the former was the fault of his age, and the latter of his temperament, which is described as extremely restless and violent. Notwithstanding, he instructed his pupils with assiduous care, and from the cartoons of the most celebrated inventors he gave them lectures in the art. Different collections abound with his small pictures, painted chiefly on copper, representing incidents from the Gospel, which attract by the abundance of the figures, by their spirit, and by the lusciousness of their tints. Similar commissions in this line were then very frequently given in Bologna; most times proceeding from the noviciate nuns, who were in the habit of carrying with them into the cloister similar little paintings to decorate their lonely cells; and Calvart provided abundance of them, with the assistance of his young men, whose pieces he retouched; and they obtained immense circulation both in Italy and Flanders. In particular those conducted by Albano and Guido, his two pupils, boast the most attractive graces, and may be known by a certain superior decision, knowledge, and facility. In the list of his altar-pieces, the S. Michele, at S. Petronio, and the Purgatory, at the Grazie, bear the palm; and from these, as well as others, the best disciples of the Caracci confessed the assistance which they received.