s is scarcely less remarkable. The time has not yet come
to speak of Raphael; nor will space suffice for detailed observations on
his fellow-students in the workshop at Perugia. The place occupied by
Perugino in the evolution of Italian painting is peculiar. In the middle
of a positive and worldly age, declining fast to frigid scepticism and
political corruption, he set the final touch of technical art upon the
devotion transmitted from earlier and more enthusiastic centuries. The
flower of Umbrian piety blossomed in the masterpieces of his youth, and
faded into dryness in the affectations of his manhood. Nothing was left on
the same line for his successors.

Among these, Bernardo Pinturicchio can here alone be mentioned. A thorough
naturalist, though saturated with the mannerism of the Umbrian school,
Pinturicchio was not distracted either by scientific or ideal aims from
the clear and fluent presentation of contemporary manners and costumes. He
is a kind of Umbrian Gozzoli, who brings us here and there in close
relation to the men of his own time, and has in consequence a special
value for the student of Renaissance life. His wall-paintings in the
library of the cathedral of Siena are so well preserved that we need not
seek elsewhere for better specimens of the decorative art most highly
prized in the first years of the sixteenth century[225]. These frescoes
have a richness of effect and a vivacity of natural action, which, in
spite of their superficiality, render them highly charming. The life of
AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Pius II., is here treated like a legend. There
is no attempt at representing the dress of half a century anterior to the
painter's date, or at rendering accurate historic portraiture. Both Pope
and Emperor are romantically conceived, and each portion of the tale is
told as though it were a fit in some popular ballad. So much remains of
Perugian affectation as gives a kind of childlike grace to the studied
attitudes and many-coloured groups of elegant young men.

We must always be careful to distinguish the importance of an artist
considered as the exponent of his age from that which he may claim by
virtue of some special skill or some peculiar quality of feeling. The art
of Perugino, for example, throws but little light upon the Renaissance
taken as a whole. Intrinsically valuable because of its technical
perfection and its purity of sentiment, it was already in the painter's
lifetime superseded b