GIACOMO DE PONT, or LE BASSAN, a celebrated Venetian painter, was born in 1510. His subjects generally were peasants and villagers, busy at their different rural occupations, according to the various seasons of the year; cattle, landscapes, and historical designs; and in all those subjects the figures were well defined, and the animals and landscapes have an agreeable resemblance of simple nature. His compositions cannot boast of much elegance or grandeur of taste, not even those which are historical; but they have abundance of force and truth. His local colours are very well observed, his carnations are fresh and brilliant, and the chiaro-uscuro and perspective well understood. His touch is free and spirited; and the differences in his landscapes are always true, if not sometimes too dark in the nearer parts. His works are spread all over Europe: many of them were purchased by Titian; and there are several in the French king's cabinet, the royal palace, and the Hotel de Toulouse. They are more readily known than those of most other painters; from the similitude of characters and countenances in the figures and animals; from the taste in the buildings, utensils, and draperies; and, besides, from a violet or purple tint that predominates in every one of his pictures. But the genuine pictures of his hand are not so easily ascertained; because he frequently repeated the same design, and his sons were mostly employed in copying the works of their father, which he sometimes retouched. As he lived to be very old, he finished a great number of pictures; yet, notwithstanding his application and years, the real pictures of Giacomo are not commonly met with. Many of those which are called originals by purchasers as well as dealers, being at best no more than copies by the sons of Baffan, who were far inferior to him; or perhaps by some painter of still meaner abilities. But the true pictures of Giacomo always bear a considerable price if they happen to be undamaged. He died in 1592, aged 82.—Francis and Leander, his sons, distinguished themselves in the same art; but inheriting a species of lunacy from their mother, both came to an untimely end.

BASSINI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA, maestro di cappella of the cathedral church of Bologna about the middle of the last century, was a very voluminous composer of music, having given to the world no fewer than 31 different works. He is equally celebrated both as a composer for the church and for concerts; and was besides a celebrated performer on the violin, and, as it is said, taught Corelli on that instrument. His compositions consist of masses, psalms, motets with instrumental parts, and sonatas for violins; his fifth opera in particular, containing 12 sonatas for two violins and a bass, is most esteemed; it is written in a style wonderfully grave and pathetic, and abounds with evidences of great learning and fine invention. The first and third operas of Corelli are apparently formed after the model of this work. Baffani was one of the first who composed motets for a single voice, with accompaniments of violins; a practice which is liable to objection, as it assimilates church-music too nearly to that of the chamber; and of his fol-motets it must be confessed that they differ in style but little from opera airs and cantatas; two operas of them, viz. the eighth and thirteenth, were printed in London by Pearfon above 50 years ago, with the title of Harmonia Festiva.