th, and worked himself at a goldsmith's
trade till he was forty years of age. Indeed he may be said never to
have relinquished his connection with the trade, and certainly he was no
more ashamed of it than of his calling as a painter, for he signed
himself indiscriminately 'goldsmith' and 'painter,' and sometimes
whimsically put 'goldsmith' to his paintings and 'painter' to his
jewellery. He was a famous designer of dies for coins and medals, and it
is quite probable, as a countryman of his own has sought to prove, that
he was the celebrated type-cutter, known as 'Francesco da Bologna.' But
it is with Francesco '_pictor_' that we have to do.

Though he only began to prosecute the painter's art in middle age, he
rose with remarkable rapidity to eminence, was the great painter of
Lombardy in his day, rivalling Squarcione, Mantegna's teacher in his
school, which numbered two hundred scholars, and becoming the founder of
the early Bolognese school of painters.

Francia is said to have been very handsome in person, with a kindly
disposition and an agreeable manner. He was on terms of cordial
friendship with Raphael, then in his youth, and thirty years Il
Francia's junior. Il Francia addressed an enthusiastic sonnet to
Raphael, and there is extant a letter of Raphael's to Il Francia,
excusing himself for not sending his friend Raphael's portrait, and
making an exchange of sketches, that of his 'Nativity' for the drawing
of Il Francia's 'Judith;' while it was to Il Francia's care that Raphael
committed his picture of St Cecilia, when it was first sent to Bologna.
These relations between the men and their characters throw discredit on
the tradition that Il Francia died from jealous grief caused by the
sight of Raphael's 'St Cecilia.' As Il Francia was seventy years of age
at the time of his death, one may well attribute it to physical causes.
Il Francia had at least one son, and another kinsman, painters, whose
paintings were so good as to be occasionally confounded with those of Il
Francia.

Il Francia is thought to have united, in his works, a certain calm
sedateness and frank sincerity to the dreamy imaginativeness of some of
his contemporaries. His finest works are considered to be the frescoes
from the life of St Cecilia in the church of St Cecilia at Bologna.

Of a Madonna and Child, by Francia, at Bologna, I shall write down
another of Dean Alford's descriptions,--many of which I have given for
this, among other reas