ALESSANDRO**, born at Florence in 1437, learned the rudiments of painting under Filippo Lippi. He executed several pictures for Pope Sixtus IV. and for the city of Florence, for which he received large sums of money; but he expended all his acquisitions in thoughtless extravagance, and at last died in great distress, aged seventy-eight. He was not only a painter, but a man of letters. Baldini, according to the general report, communicated to him the secret of engraving, then newly discovered by Finiguerra, their townsman. The famous edition