y contemporary artist of the still rival
cities around him. Doubtless he would fraternize with any such with all
courtesy and a genuine sentiment of the universal brotherhood of art.
But that Perugia was not greater and more glorious in arts and in arms
than any of her rival cities in the great olden time--that her artistic
history is not the richest, her school the most worthy of persistent
study--this it would be too much to expect him to think possible for an
instant. And accordingly our talk was of the school that had produced
Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, Pintusicchio, Perugino, Giannicola (generally but
erroneously called Giannicola _Manni_) and so many others. Signor
Moretti's own style has very evidently been formed on a long and loving
study of the works of Pietro Vannucci, more generally known as Perugino,
unquestionably the greatest of the school. The delicious figure of the
Virgin in his great window in the cathedral is thoroughly and entirely
Peruginesque. Yet in the treatment especially of his male figures Signor
Moretti has profited by the wider range of study possible at the present
day, and by the juster feeling springing from it, to avoid that
mannerism and too constantly recurring affectation of dainty
grace--often much out of place--which must be admitted to be a marking
characteristic of Perugino. There is a sturdy unself-consciousness about
Signor Moretti's figures which is incompatible with the somewhat
dandified airs and attitudinizing which Perugino often attributes to
figures to whom such characteristics seem the least appropriate, and in
cases where they would be least expected. It cannot be denied that
Perugino's figures are dignified, and that in a very remarkable degree;
but they are so by virtue of bearing, of proportion, of grace, and,
above all, of expression of face and feature; and in the case of his
full-length figures especially it is the dignity of a fine gentleman,
rather than that of a grand nature, objective and in no wise subjective
in its thoughts and preoccupations. In a word, it cannot, I think, be
denied that the grandeur and dignity of Perugino's men and women are
due rather to outward than to inward characteristics. It occurred to me
to reflect whether certain portions of our conversation in Signor
Moretti's studio might not, while illustrating in a singular manner the
value of much of the current talk of the present day about the great
Umbrian painter, throw at the same time some li