of the passionate times in which he
lived. His hard unsympathetic features in the portraits at Perugia and
Florence do not belie, but rather win credence for Vasari's tales about
his sordid soul.[221] Local traditions and contemporary rumours, again,
give colour to what Vasari relates about his infidelity; while the
criminal records of Florence prove that he was not over-scrupulous to keep
his hands from violence.[222] How could such a man, we ask ourselves, have
endured to pass a long life in the _fabrication of devotional pictures?_
Whence did he derive the sentiment of masterpieces, for piety only
equalled by those of Fra Angelico, either in his own nature or in the
society of a city torn to pieces by the factions of the Baglioni? How,
again, was it possible for an artist who at times touched beauty so ideal,
to be contented with the stencilling by his pupils of conventional figures
on canvases to which he gave his name? Taking these questions separately,
we might reply that "there is no art to find the mind's construction in
the face;" that painting in the sixteenth century was a trade regulated by
the demand for particular wares; that men can live among ruffians without
sharing their mood; that the artist and the moral being are separate, and
may not be used to interpret each other. Yet, after giving due weight to
such answers, Perugino, being what he was, living at the time he did, not
as a recluse, but as a prosperous _impresario_ of painting, and
systematically devoting his powers to pietistic art, must be for us a
puzzle. That the quietism of his highly artificial style should have been
fashionable in Perugia, while the Baglioni were tearing each other to
pieces, and the troops of the Vitelli and the Borgia were trampling upon
Umbria, is one of the most striking paradoxes of an age rich in dramatic
contradictions.

It is much to be regretted, with a view to solving the question of
Perugino's personality in relation to his art, that his character does not
emerge with any salience from the meagre notices we have received
concerning him, and that we know but little of his private life. Vasari
tells us that he married a very beautiful girl, and that one of his chief
pleasures was to see this wife handsomely dressed at home and abroad. He
often decked her out in clothes and jewels with his own hand. For the
rest, we find in Perugino, far more than in either Mantegna or Signorelli,
an instance of the simple Italian cr