The decisive role of the Carracci in seventeenth-century art was as apparent to their contemporaries as it is now, in our own time. Annibale Carracci ranks directly after Caravaggio as the most important Italian painter of the Baroque era. He established the tradition of Roman baroque classicism so firmly that it flourished in an unbroken line--Carracci to Albani to Sacchi to Maratta--for more than a century. Generation after generation of artists came to Rome to study his frescoes in the Farnese Gallery, and his influence in the development of French neo-classicism is still being explored. The classical concept of the "composed landscape," largely his invention, was to prove of central importance, first to Poussin and later to Cezanne. The translation, the first into English, is from Bellori's Vite de' Pittori, Scultori ed Architetti Moderni published in Rome in 1672. A friend of Poussin, Bellori was librarian to Queen Christina of Sweden. Pope Clement X recognized his many works on ancient art (still of value today) by making him Antiquarian of Rome. Unlike many earlier and later art historians, Bellori did not attempt to write about all the artists of a given area or epoch, but selected only those he considered significant. Schlosser called him "the most important historian of art not just of Rome but of all Italy, indeed of Europe, in the seventeenth century."