We have now traced the art of Pietro Vannucci from its first beginnings in the workshop of some unknown teacher at Perugia to the time when he was one of the accepted masters of Italian art, as much at home in Florence—that glowing centre of artistic impulse and creation—as in his own Perugia, or in the Rome of the Renaissance Popes. Here, then, before we proceed further with the story of his art, which is practically the story of his busy life, there are some points on which we shall not waste time in lingering. We saw how Perugino, like Giotto himself and almost every great master of Italian painting, had perfected his knowledge and trained his eye and hand in the practice of fresco-painting; and we have next to notice that he obtained fame among his contemporaries, as well as patronage, from his knowledge and use of the new oil medium. Vasari on this point is most explicit: "Certainly colouring was a matter which Pietro thoroughly understood, and this both in fresco as well as in oil ..." and again he mentions certain pictures specially as being painted in oil.

Of course one cannot set up even such direct evidence from Vasari as conclusive, for we know there are many slips in his invaluable chronicle; and this very point of the master's medium for his panel pictures has been questioned by modern critics.

Dr. G. C. Williamson in his excellent monograph on Perugino refers to Mr. Herbert Horne—a critic whose opinion on Italian art carries great weight—as saying that "all Perugino's pictures were painted in tempera on a gesso background," and suggests at least that an entirely different technique can be traced in the Albani altar-piece and that of the Certosa. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, in their notice of Perugino, have analysed very carefully his technique, and shown how his flesh tints were worked up from a warm brown undertone, through a succession of glazes, each lighter in colour and fuller in body than the last, "receiving light from without and transparency from within," till the highest light was reached.

In this analysis the authors have obviously and entirely the oil medium in view; but there is another view which, as it seems to me, may throw light upon the question.

Experiments have, as I understand, been made in late years in Germany to combine the use of tempera with that of oil-painting—the object being to combine the brilliancy and richness of oil with the lasting colour of tempera, in which yolk of egg was used with the pure colours—and I believe that certain results have been attained. Now this was just the position of painting in Perugino's day, when upon the old tempera panels of the Giottesques and their successors the oil technique of the Van Eycks was asserting its advantages; and I would suggest that our master in this period of transition used both mediums, and perhaps sometimes in the same picture may have passed from one to the other. Here, too, his connection with the Gesuati may have aided him materially, for Vasari tells us expressly how these friars, for whom he worked very frequently, were practised in the art of colours as well as enamel and glass-painting, and it was perhaps from them that he had learned the secret which makes his altar-pieces still so transparent and so pure in colour.

Another point which we cannot fail to notice at this period of Pietro's life is his immense activity, his careful business relations in contracts for his work, and his continual industry. He is so constantly on the move that we begin to wonder how he found time for his paintings: he is so continually productive that we wonder no less that he found it possible to travel. His wanderings might be normal in these days of Pullman-cars and express trains, but in an age when any journey was a matter of difficulty and often personal danger they seem almost phenomenal. From Orvieto (1490) he goes to Florence, from Florence to Perugia, and thence to Rome; in 1493 he is married at Fiesole to Chiara Fancelli; in 1494 he is at Venice, and probably at Cremona, painting there his altar-piece at S. Agostino; then back again to Florence, at Perugia in March of 1496, making his contract for the famous Vatican Madonna, and at Pavia in October of the same year, working at his no less famous altar-piece of the Certosa.

In all these visits he was either arranging for fresh work or leaving some lovely altar-piece as a memorial of his presence; and next we shall notice that the two real points of attraction in all this busy life are Perugia, his native city, if not actually his birthplace, and Florence. Rome, though he spent some time there, and completed much important work, never, I think, had the same hold upon him; but between Florence and Perugia he often seems to hesitate. And this is really important, because the two tendencies, the Umbrian and the Florentine, are always present in his art. He had completed, as we saw, his training in the city of Arno, had married later (1493) a beautiful Florentine girl, the daughter of Luca Fancelli, who brought with her a dowry of 500 golden florins, and on his return from Perugia in 1496 had invested part of the money he had received for his altar-piece of the Magistrates' Chapel in land at Florence.

In fact, during the whole of these years, after his return from Rome at the time of Alexander Borgia's accession (1492) to nearly 1500, I take our master's real centre of activity as being Florence; there he had his workshop, painted panels for distant customers, undertook frescoes for the Florentine convents, and returned after his business visits to other parts of Italy. The year 1499 marks a change in all this, for this was the year in which the master definitely threw over the offer of the Orvietans to decorate their Capella di S. Brizio in Orvieto Duomo, and accepted his great commission from the Perugian guild of bankers to adorn with fresco paintings their audience-hall—the Sala del Cambio. This great commission necessitated a long stay at Perugia, and therefore the master broke up his Florentine workshop, or "bottega."

But Florence had evidently a very deep hold on his affections, for we find that in 1504 he gave up his Perugian establishment for the purpose of returning to Florence, and on arriving there took a lodging in the Pinti suburb. At Florence Perugino was justly esteemed as one of the great master-craftsmen of the city, and as such was invariably consulted—as in the great meeting held (January of 1491) to consider the new faÇade of S. Maria del Fiore; or again when (in January of 1497) he was invited with Benozzo Gozzoli, Cosimo Rosselli, and Filippino Lippi to value the frescoes of Alessio Baldovinetti in S. TrinitÀ of Florence; or yet again when (June of 1498), after the destruction of the lantern of S. Maria del Fiore by lightning, he tendered his advice along with Filippino and Lorenzo di Credi.

But while Pietro had been busied at Perugia, in those years of absence (1499-1504) a new spirit, of dÆmonic power, had come to fascinate the Florentines, and give them a new conception of the art of the human form; and, in fact, hardly had our master reached Florence and secured his lodging than he was invited to give his verdict as to the best site for Michelangelo's gigantic marble "David." Feeling ran high in the city both as to the site and the work itself. As to the former, the Loggia de' Signori was suggested, but Michelangelo himself preferred the left-hand side of the doorway of the Palazzo Vecchio, and his wish was respected. Yet the feeling against this figure among some of the citizens was such that, when it was exposed, it became a mark for missiles, and the watchmen set to guard it were assaulted. We may imagine that there were frequent gatherings and many heated discussions among the artistic confraternity, who were wont to meet in the shop of Baccio d'Agnolo; and it may have been in one of these discussions that "Michelangelo declared to Perugino that his art was absurd and antiquated." "Goffo nell' arte"—a bungler in his art—that is the precise phrase quoted by Vasari, and which so rankled in the breast of the elder man that, "Pietro being unable to support such an insult, they both carried their plaint before the magistracy of the Eight; in the which affair Pietro remained with but little credit."

It would have been better, we feel, and more dignified, to have passed over the slighting word with the contempt which it deserved. The master of the Sistine fresco which we have described, of the Albani altar-piece and its younger sister of the Certosa, of the altar-piece of the Magistrates' Chapel at Perugia, and the superb frescoes of the Cambio, stood far above such criticism in his own or any later age; and this appreciation of the Perugian's work in art does not imply any depreciation of Buonarroti's genius, of which, in its own sublime and individual path, the present writer is an enthusiastic admirer.

But Pietro was a strong-tempered and revengeful man, as is shown by the earlier records of Florentine justice, when he had appeared (in July of 1487) before the Eight—the "Otto di Custodia"—for having, with a notorious ruffian, one Aulista di Angelo of Perugia, waylaid a private enemy more than once with the intention of beating him—"pluries et pluries nocturno tempore accesserunt armati quibusdam bastonibus." On that occasion he had escaped with a fine of ten florins of gold; and this later appearance does not seem, in its issue, to have been to the master's credit.

There was, besides this, much of truth in Buonarroti's criticism—a truth which added to the sting—that by this time Pietro's art had already begun to show old motives carelessly repeated. "Pietro," says our Vasari, "had worked so much, and had always such abundance of work in hand, that he often put the same things into his works; and had so reduced his art to a system that he gave to all his figures the same appearance." If this tendency appears even in his work before 1500, it becomes much more apparent later on; but to dwell on this point here would carry me too far, and for the present we are concerned with the master in his full strength at the date just mentioned. For the year 1500 dates the completion of the Cambio frescoes, and may be taken roughly as the great central date in Pietro's art. Before describing in detail those frescoes, let us consider what other commissions had preceded that of the Perugian bankers.

Foremost among these must come the great altar-piece of the Certosa of Pavia, to which I have frequently alluded. It had been commissioned by Duke Lodovico Sforza of Milan soon after the artist left Venice—the great Certosa monastery being always under the personal patronage of the Dukes of Milan. Pietro seems to have been working at it already in 1496, and it was completed, on the Duke's pressing instance, by the end of 1499. It has only remained partially in its original place—in the second chapel on the left of the great Carthusian church. The upper central painting—that of the Eternal Father—is still by Perugino, the three lower panels are copies from the originals, now in the National Gallery of London, and the panels at the side are by Borgognone.

Nothing that the master of Perugia has left us exceeds in tranquil beauty these central panels of the London National Gallery. Orsini tells us that from 1795 the Certosa painting with its six panels had passed into the possession of the ducal family of Melzi at Milan; but this is not quite correct, for we have seen that the panel of the Eternal Father is still in place. In 1856 Duke Melzi parted with his three panels to the London Gallery. In the centre panel the sweet, pensive Virgin is adoring the child Jesus, who is watched over by an angel, as in Leonardo's famous "Madonna of the Rocks," while three angels make music in the sky above; on the right of this is the Archangel Raphael with the young Tobias; on the left the lovely figure of the Archangel Michael, fully armed, with legs apart set firmly on the ground, and left hand resting on his shield—a figure which the master repeated more than once, notably in the great Assumption of the Virgin in the Florence Academy.

Perugino was married at this time to the beautiful Chiara Fancelli, and there is little doubt that she appears in more than one of his pictures; in particular, she is said to have posed for the Archangel Raphael of this Certosa altar-piece. Next to the beauty of type in this and other figures, we have to notice the pure rich colouring and the extraordinary beauty, in the central panel, of the landscape background. All the Umbrian sense of space is there, in this valley with its winding stream and blue distances, while in the middle distance the delicately drawn trees are mirrored against the clear sky. It is a picture one would love to live with, and, without possessing the rapt devotion, the deep inner spirit, which pervades the paintings of Angelico, its atmosphere is calm, restful, and in that sense prayerful.

A whole group of other paintings, attractive and interesting, though of lesser interest, belongs to this splendidly fertile period of Pietro's genius. The Fano altar-piece—a Virgin and Child with Saints—dates from a visit in 1497, and an Annunciation followed in the next year, while at Sinigaglia and Cantiano there are very similar works. Both the Fano pictures, which I have not seen, have been carefully described by Dr. Williamson in his monograph on this artist. The Madonna Crowned, with the Child on her knee and a group of kneeling penitents behind, now in the Perugian Gallery, was painted for the confraternity of San Pietro Martire in 1497; and there is in the same gallery a somewhat similar work, painted for another confraternity, with two saints (one of whom is St. Bernardino) kneeling in the foreground, and in the distance Perugia, with the yet untouched towers of the Baglioni.

To the same period have been attributed the Family of St. Anne, at Marseilles, and the Virgin in Glory, of the Bologna Gallery, with its armed St. Michael and its lovely female figure of St. Apollonia; and now we come to a creation which, in its fine drawing and composition and its atmosphere of tranquil beauty, takes a place beside the Certosa altar-piece or that of the Perugian Magistrates' Chapel. I refer to the Virgin appearing to St. Bernard, now in the Munich Gallery. The theme was a favourite one at this period of Italian art, for it has been treated with great beauty by Filippino Lippi in his painting in the Badia at Florence. The Munich picture was destined by our master for S. Spirito at Florence, and was acquired (in 1829) by King Ludwig of Bavaria from the Capponi family, who held the rights over the chapel where it hung. As in Filippino's rendering, the monastic saint is seated in study or adoration, and looks up, with a startled gesture, to see the Virgin enter with a train of lovely angels; but what Filippino fails to equal—even with his delicious angels, who might be taken from Florentine urchins—is the sense of tranquil beauty which comes to us in these figures of the Perugian master, and is continued in that wonderful sweep of distant landscape seen through the open colonnade. A study for this fine painting is among the drawings in the Uffizi Gallery.

I have already had occasion to mention the great Crucifixion of S. Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi (completed 1496), and a very similar treatment of this subject appears in a later Crucifixion painted for the Convent of S. Jerome in Florence, and now in the Accademia of that city. Here, in the three figures introduced, the Christ and the Virgin mother are almost reproduced from those in the larger fresco of S. Maria Maddalena, but are coarser and more careless in the painting. The city here in the distance has been traced to be Florence, and the date suggested is about 1498. Closer yet to this central date of the Perugian master's work is the great Vallombrosa "Assumption" (dated 1500); but this very probably succeeded immediately in order of time to the Sala del Cambio frescoes, and therefore I leave it for the moment to speak of the earlier, but most important, commission of the altar-piece of the Magistrates' Chapel at Perugia. A painting to decorate this chapel, and which was to include the portraits of the Priori, the governing body then in office, had been commissioned from Pietro as early as 1483, and the contract actually signed; but the master had more important work on hand—notably his frescoes for the chapel of Pope Sixtus—and it was not till twelve years later, in 1495, that, being again in Perugia and at the summit of his fame, he was successfully captured by the magistrates of that city, and signed a fresh contract on far higher terms (one hundred golden ducats, but with a time limit of six months for the work) to paint the altar-piece of their chapel. The result was the masterpiece which now hangs in the Vatican Gallery, and shows us the Virgin enthroned with the Child standing upright on her knee, beneath such an open portico as appears in the "Vision of St. Bernard," and with beside her four grave attendant saints, as robed and mitred bishops. Here the master varies a little his frequent signature—for Petrus de Chastro Plebis pinxit gives as his birthplace the little Umbrian city of CittÀ della Pieve.

The great altar-piece, which possesses all the devotional beauty and repose of his best period, was this time completed within the time agreed, and took its honoured place within the Magistrates' Chapel at Perugia, whence it was torn away by the invading French in 1797, and found its way back, not to Perugia, but to the Vatican collection at Rome. Perugia, especially in the person of her greatest master, Pietro Vannucci, suffered terribly at the hands of Napoleon; and here I must express my appreciation of the able description given by my friend Dr. G. C. Williamson of what he very aptly calls "the story of the pillage."

Perugia in 1796 was very rich in the works of her master, Pietro Perugino. "Almost every church possessed pictures by the master. The altar-piece painted in 1495 for the Magistrates' Chapel was still in situ, and public buildings were full of rich decoration." But Napoleon, a man whose life was steeped in battle and human bloodshed, seems by a strange contrast to have had a particular fancy for the quiet devotional art of the Umbrian master. His commissioner, one Tinet by name, had orders to ransack Perugia, and six cartloads of her treasured paintings, drawn by oxen, left the city for Paris. One altar-piece, that of the Magistrates' Chapel, was nearly forgotten, but remembered at the last moment, and included. But even so, the terrible conqueror who held Italy beneath his feet was not contented, and a fresh decree, of 1811, ordered more pictures to be sent for his Paris collection. A certain Tofanelli was now the agent for further spoliation, and by diligent search forty-eight more pictures were squeezed out of unlucky Perugia, and in November of 1813 forwarded, vi Rome, to Paris. Napoleon had now more works of Perugino than he could find place for in his gallery of the Louvre, and gave many of them away to the provincial museums of France; and thus it happens that the works of our master are distributed, in fragmentary condition in panels from his famous altar-pieces, among the French provincial cities—such towns as Bordeaux, Marseilles, Lyons, Grenoble, Nantes, Rouen, and Caen, where they are practically inaccessible to the average student—while only a small portion of the once rich collection of his works remains within the Perugian Pinacoteca.

But fortunately his masterpiece in fresco painting within the Sala del Cambio could not be so easily torn from the walls. I have already alluded to the acceptance by the master in 1499 of this commission, for which he had refused the decoration of Orvieto Duomo. The actual space offered him to decorate by the Perugian bankers in their Sala del Cambio was not very great, but the result was a thing of perfect beauty—"a little gem" (I called it in my notes written at Perugia, and published some years ago) "of decorative Renaissance art. It is a small room, panelled with the loveliest tarsia work (this too from Vannucci's design), and above these panels the master's frescoes. The 'Nativity' and 'Transfiguration' at the end of the room are among his finest, ripest works, and on each side are the Prophets and Sibyls, or heroes, kings, and sages of antiquity—Leonidas the Spartan, Trajan the wise Roman emperor, Fabius 'Cunctator,' Socrates, Horatius, who kept the bridge, and the Roman Camillus."

It is most probable that the whole scheme of decoration, and of these classic sages and heroes in particular, with their guiding virtues above, was supplied to the artist by the humanist Maturanzio, Secretary to the "Priori" of Perugia, and acting under their orders; while Maturanzio himself may have drawn his inspiration from a MS. Cicero in the Perugian Library, in whose miniatures the four cardinal virtues appear beside the heroes who displayed them in their lives. Such a dictation was quite in the traditions of the best Italian art. I have shown in an earlier work—"The Renaissance in Italian Art"—how this was probably the case in the famous frescoes of the Spanish chapel at Florence, where Ruskin had pictured the artist himself as giving his message of religious dogmatic teaching to the world; and later we shall see how the Marchioness of Mantua, Isabella d'Este, ties down our Pietro most mercilessly in the allegorical painting which she commissions.

But here, in the rendering at least, Perugino is entirely himself, and all these figures, whether heroes of heathendom or sages or prophets—Isaiah, Moses, David, and Daniel—or virtues or lovely sibyls, are painted in one key of tranquil, devotional beauty. "Obliged," says Addington Symonds, "to treat in the Sala del Cambio the representative heroes of Greek and Roman story, he adopted the manner of his religious paintings. Leonidas, the lion-hearted Spartan, and Cato, the austere Roman, bend their mild heads like flowers in Perugino's frescoes, and gather up their drapery in studied folds with celestial delicacy."

In the ceiling, which, if not painted by himself, is undoubtedly from his design, he had perhaps a freer hand in the arrangement, and has created a very lovely piece of decoration. Here the deities of the old heathen world appear as imaged in that delicious sentiment of the earlier Renaissance. Venus is wafted through the sky, drawn by two doves; Luna, nude to the waist, sits in a chariot with her nymphs in harness; Mercury holds his caduceus, the serpent wand; Apollo drives his four-horsed chariot; and—loveliest group of all—Jupiter receives the cup of nectar from young Ganymede, "such a cup-bearer" (I wrote in my Perugian notes) "as the tyrants of the Visconti or the Baglioni may have had—a slim young page with long floating curls, his limbs clad in tight red hose, and long ribbons twining around him, as on bent knee he offers the cup to his master."

His fellow-citizens wished the master to include his own portrait in the frescoes of their Cambio, and here it is, for us, a square, solid-looking face of middle life, whose hair escapes from the tight red cap—a face not perhaps attractive, but of intellectuality and power, and with great determination in the lines of mouth and chin. The Latin lines of compliment beneath are probably due to the scholarly pen of Maturanzio, and on the other side the words Anno Salut. MD give the date of the work's completion—the central date, as we may fairly take it, of Perugino's genius, and his life-work in art. It is the moment when he climbs the hill-top—this fateful year that divides the century—and stands upon the highest ground; henceforth for him too, as for his country, the slow years mark the footsteps of decline.