In the Pitti Palace, Florence

V. Virgin with Little St. John adoring the Infant Christ 40

In the Pitti Palace, Florence

VI. Francesco delle Opere 50

In the Uffizi Gallery, Florence

VII. The Dead Christ 60

In the Academy of Fine Arts, Florence

VIII. Virgin and Child with Two Male Saints 70

In the National Gallery, London

* * * * *

I

[Illustration]

In considering the work of one of the greatest of the masters of the
Renaissance, we have to go further back than the disputed question as to
who was the first teacher of Pietro di Cristofano Vannucci--surnamed by
his contemporaries "_il Perugino_," the Perugian--and to inquire into the
more interesting story of his predecessors in that wonderful School of
Umbria, on which his art puts, in a certain sense, the seal and
completion.

In an earlier work on this subject I traced this school, in its first
definite inception, to that grand old religious painter Niccolo da
Foligno, whose art may be studied within his native city of
Foligno--in his great altar-piece of the church of S. Niccolo--in
Perugia, Paris, London, and his fine paintings in the Vatican Gallery
at Rome; and in all these works I traced in Niccolo a great master,
"archaic but strong in drawing and full of character, possessing just
the qualities of the founder of a great school." But upon that school
many influences were to stream in, and to affect its progress. The
earlier art of Siena, the city of Mary Virgin, intensely emotional and
religious in its character, the dignity of Duccio and the Lorenzetti,
the grace and delicate beauty of Simone Memmi were among these. Close
to Niccolo himself, in the hill-town of Montefalco, the Florentine,
Benozzo Gozzoli, pupil of Fra Angelico, had been busied on picture
stories from St. Francis' legend, which seem to find their
continuation in the Perugian miracle pictures of Fiorenzo di Lorenzo;
and yet nearer to Florence, in the Umbrian Borderland, that "King of
Painting," Piero della Francesca, was to combine the Umbrian emotion
with Florentine intellectualism.

These are the influences which were to stream upon the young Pietro as
an eager and industrious student--some among them of course
indirectly, but others no doubt very directly and immediately.
Va