Reynolds in Discourse Fourteen writes that:
Italy has undoubtedly a prescriptive right to an admiration bordering on prejudice, as a soil particularly adapted, congenial, and, we may add, destined to the production of men of great genius in our Art. ( Reynolds, Discourses, p.248)
In Discourse Three, 1770, Reynolds agrees with Vasari that even the best of non-Italian painters such as Dürer never achieved as much as he would have achieved 'had he been initiated into those great principles of art, which were so well understood and practised by his contemporaries in Italy ( Reynolds, Discourses, p.51)'. In Discourse Six, 1774, Jan Steen would have been among the greatest if he 'had had the good fortune to be born in Italy ( Reynolds, Discourses, p.109)'.
For Reynolds, as for Vasari, the great division of Italian painters was that between Florentine and Venetian schools. For both Reynolds in Discourse Four, as forVasari, the Florentine painters were the better, with the Venetian painters in an 'inferior class' ( Reynolds, Discourses, p.63).
However Reynolds also warns in Discourse Fourteen that the reputation of Italian painting had produced a lack of discrimination in making judgements about Italian painters ( Reynolds, Discourses, p.248).