on of the
altar-piece of the Magistrates' Chapel at Perugia. A painting to
decorate this chapel, and which was to include the portraits of the
Priori, the governing body then in office, had been commissioned from
Pietro as early as 1483, and the contract actually signed; but the
master had more important work on hand--notably his frescoes for the
chapel of Pope Sixtus--and it was not till twelve years later, in
1495, that, being again in Perugia and at the summit of his fame, he
was successfully captured by the magistrates of that city, and signed
a fresh contract on far higher terms (one hundred golden ducats, but
with a time limit of six months for the work) to paint the altar-piece
of their chapel. The result was the masterpiece which now hangs in the
Vatican Gallery, and shows us the Virgin enthroned with the Child
standing upright on her knee, beneath such an open portico as appears
in the "Vision of St. Bernard," and with beside her four grave
attendant saints, as robed and mitred bishops. Here the master varies
a little his frequent signature--for _Petrus de Chastro Plebis pinxit_
gives as his birthplace the little Umbrian city of Citta della Pieve.

The great altar-piece, which possesses all the devotional beauty and
repose of his best period, was this time completed within the time
agreed, and took its honoured place within the Magistrates' Chapel at
Perugia, whence it was torn away by the invading French in 1797, and
found its way back, not to Perugia, but to the Vatican collection at
Rome. Perugia, especially in the person of her greatest master, Pietro
Vannucci, suffered terribly at the hands of Napoleon; and here I must
express my appreciation of the able description given by my friend Dr.
G. C. Williamson of what he very aptly calls "the story of the
pillage."

Perugia in 1796 was very rich in the works of her master, Pietro
Perugino. "Almost every church possessed pictures by the master. The
altar-piece painted in 1495 for the Magistrates' Chapel was still _in
situ_, and public buildings were full of rich decoration." But
Napoleon, a man whose life was steeped in battle and human bloodshed,
seems by a strange contrast to have had a particular fancy for the
quiet devotional art of the Umbrian master. His commissioner, one
Tinet by name, had orders to ransack Perugia, and six cartloads of her
treasured paintings, drawn by oxen, left the city for Paris. One
altar-piece, that of the Magistrates' Chapel, was