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 s