Note 67 — BOOK I.

The old painters varied the manner of their superscriptions, even in the following ages, according to the taste of the Greeks. Sebastianus Venetus pingebat a. 1520; is written upon a St. Agatha in the Palazzo Pitti; and this corresponds to the ΕΠΟΙΕΙ, faciebat; by which the Greek sculptors wished to convey, that such work was not intended to exhibit their last effort; so that they were at liberty to improve it when they pleased. The subscription of Opus Belli is obvious, and similar ones, drawn from the ΕΡΓΟΝ, (for example,) ΛΥΣΡΡΟΥ which we see in Maffei. I recount in my fifth book as singular, the epigraph Sumus Rogerii manus; it is, however, derived from the Greeks, who, for instance, sometimes wrote ΧΕΙΡ. ΑΜΒΡΟΣΙΟΥ. ΜΟΝΑΧΟΥ, as I read in a Fabrianese church called Della Carità, where there is a picture of the General Judgment; the figures very small, and highly finished, upon a large tablet; with, I think, more figures than are seen in the Paradise of Tintoretto. ΧΕΙΡ ΒΙΤΟΡΕ, was written by Vittor Carpaccio, under his portrait cited in the index. I omit other forms better known. That adopted at Trevigi, Hieronymus Tarvisio, is very erudite; and it is imitated from the military latercoli, in which, with the same view, the soldier and his country are named. In short, where the words fecit or pinxit are not used, the best plan was that of giving the proper name in the genitive case at the foot of the picture, as the engravers of Greek gems were wont to do in inscriptions, as ΑΥΛΟΥ ΔΙΟΣΚΟΡΙΔΟΥ, &c.