The present book continues the series of volumes dealing with the various national schools of Western European painting which are represented in the collections of Soviet museums. The collection of Italian paintings in the Leningrad Hermitage is among the world's largest. The 199 reproductions included in this edition cover eight centuries of the development of Italian painting, from Simone Martini's famous Madonna of the Early Renaissance down to the works of such eminent twentieth-century masters as Campigli, Morandi, Guttuso and others. The masterpieces of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Giorgione, Tintoretto, Titian and Veronese; the realistic canvases of Caravaggio and his school; the works of the Bologna Academy group headed by the brothers Carracci; the colorful, buoyant art of the Venetians Tiepolo, Guardi and Canaletto - such is the scope of the volume's contents reflecting the great variety of artistic schools and tendencies in Italian painting. Members of the Hermitage staff have devoted much effort to the study of this rich collection, the cleaning and restoration of many of the pictures, and the discovery of new documentary materials and convincing analogies. They have been able to reattribute some works and to date others more correctly. The results of this extensive research are reflected in the introductory article and in the notes on the plates, which were written by Svetlana Vsevolozhskaya, Chief Curator of Italian painting at the Hermitage and the author of numerous publications on the history of Italian art.