Italy. It would be idle to question her indisputable claim to this high honour; and Sixtus IV., who, as we have before mentioned, sought through all Italy for artists to ornament the Sistine chapel, procured the greatest number from Tuscany; nor were there to be found amongst them any who were his own subjects, except Pietro Perugino, and he too had risen to notice and celebrity in Florence. These then are the first mature fruits of the Roman school, for until this period they had been crude and tasteless. Pietro is her Masaccio, her Ghirlandajo, her all. We will here take a short view of him and his scholars, reserving, however, the divine Raffaello to the next epoch, which indeed is designated by his illustrious name.

Pietro Vannucci della Pieve,^[19] as he calls himself in some pictures, or of Perugia in others, from the citizenship which he there enjoyed, had studied under a master of no great celebrity, if we are to believe Vasari; and this was a Pietro da Perugia, as Bottari conjectured, or Niccolò Alunno, as it was reported in Foligno. Mariotti pretends that Pietro advanced himself greatly in Perugia in the schools of Bonfigli, and Pietro della Francesca, from which he not only derived that excellence in perspective, which, from the testimony of Vasari was so much admired in Florence, but also much of his design and colouring.^[20] Mariotti then raises a doubt whether, when he went as an artist to Florence, he became the scholar of Verrocchio, as writers report, or whether he did not rather perfect himself from the great examples of Masaccio, and the excellent painters who at that time flourished there; and he finally determines in favour of the opinion held by Pascoli, Bottari, and Taja, and adopted by Padre Resta, in his Galleria Portatile, p. 10, that Verrocchio was never his master. It is well worth while to read the disquisitions of this able writer in his fifth letter, where we may admire the dexterity with which he settles a point so perplexed and so interesting to the history of art. I will only add that it appears to me not improbable, that Pietro, when he arrived at Florence, attached himself to this most celebrated artist, and was instructed by him in design, and in the plastic art particularly, and in that fine style of painting with which Verrocchio, without much practising it himself, imbued both Vinci and Credi. Traditions are seldom wholly groundless; they have generally some foundation in truth.

The manner of Pietro is somewhat hard and dry, like that of other painters of his time; and he occasionally exhibits a poverty in the drapery of his figures; his garments and mantles being curtailed and confined. But he atones for these faults by the grace of his heads, particularly in his boys and in his women; which have an air of elegance and a charm of colour unknown to his contemporaries. It is delightful to behold in his pictures, and in his frescos which remain in Perugia and Rome, the bright azure ground which affords such high relief to his figures; the green, purple, and violet tints so chastely harmonized, the beautiful and well drawn landscape and edifices, which, as Vasari says, was a thing until that time never seen in Florence. In his altarpieces he is not sufficiently varied. There is a remarkable painting executed for the church of S. Simone, at Perugia, of a Holy Family, one of the first specimens of a well designed and well composed altarpiece. In other respects Pietro did not make any great advances in invention; his Crucifixions and his Descents from the Cross are numerous, and of an uniform character. He has thus represented, with little variation, the Ascensions of our Lord and of the Virgin, in Bologna, in Florence, Perugia, and Città di S. Sepolcro. He was reproached with this circumstance in his lifetime, and defended himself by saying that no one had a right to complain, as the designs were all his own. There is also another defence, which is, that compositions, really beautiful, are still seen with delight when repeated in different places; whoever sees in the Sistine his S. Peter invested with the keys, will not be displeased at finding at Perugia the same landscape, in a picture of the Marriage of the Virgin. On the contrary, this picture is one of the finest objects that noble city affords; and may be considered as containing an epitome of the various styles of Pietro. In the opinion of some persons, his frescos exhibit a more fertile invention, and greater delicacy and harmony of colour. Of these, his masterpiece is in his native city, in the Sala del Cambio. It is an evangelical subject, with saints from the Old Testament, and with his own portrait, to which his grateful fellow citizens attached an elegant eulogy. He is most eminent, and adopts a sort of Raffaellesque style, in some of his latter pictures. I have observed it in a Holy Family, in the Carmine in Perugia. The same may be said too of certain small pictures, almost of a miniature class; as in the grado of S. Peter, in Perugia, than which nothing can be more finished and beautiful; and in many other pieces in which he has spared no pains,^[21] but which are few in comparison to the multitude by his scholars, attributed to him.

In treating of the school of Pietro Perugino, it is necessary to advert to what Taja,^[22] and after him the author of the Lettere Perugine, notices respecting his scholars, "that they were most scrupulous in adhering to the manner of their master, and as they were very numerous, they have filled the world with pictures, which both by painters and connoisseurs are very commonly considered as his." When his works in Perugia are inspected, he generally rises in the esteem of travellers, of whom many have only seen paintings incorrectly ascribed to him. In Florence there are some of his pictures in the Grand Duke's collection: and in the church of S. Chiara, his beautiful Descent from the Cross, and some other works; but in private collections both here and in other cities of Tuscany, many Holy Families are assigned to him, which are most probably by Gerino da Pistoja, or some of his Tuscan scholars, of whom there is a catalogue in our first book. The Papal states also possessed many of his scholars, who were of higher reputation, nor so wholly attached to his manner as the strangers. Bernardino Pinturicchio, his scholar and assistant in Perugia and in Rome, was a painter little valued by Vasari, who has not allowed him his full share of merit. He has not the style of design of his master, and retains more than consistent with his age, the ornaments of gold in his drapery; but he is magnificent in his edifices, spirited in his countenances, and extremely natural in every thing he introduces into his composition. As he was on the most familiar footing with Raffaello, with whom he painted at Siena, he has emulated his grace in some of his figures, as in his picture of S. Lorenzo in the church of the Francescani di Spello, in which there is a small S.