le expression of devout feeling to
be seen in many of Perugino's faces."

"Therein," replied the professor, "you have a measure of the power of
the man's imagination. If he felt no devotion himself, he was able to
conceive the frame of mind, and consequent expression of face and
feature, in those who did."

Perugino was therefore giving us _not_ the outcome of his own heart and
emotions, as Beato Angelico did, but only his imagination of what would
be under certain given circumstances the outcome of another man's heart
and emotions. Now, may not the same exercise of the imagination account
for those special mannerisms which have been noticed as observable in
Perugino's figures? The great Umbrian painter was not a man who lived in
the companionship and intimacy of the great and noble, as several of his
successors of a generation or two later did. He was the son of a
_piccolo possidente_ (a small landowner), doubtless cultivating his own
fields, and in all respects little removed from the condition of a
_contadine_, or peasant. Look at the speaking portrait of the artist by
his own hand which hangs on the wall of the Collegio dell' arti del
Cambio in Perugia, the walls of which are covered with immortal frescoes
by him. It is a broad, bluff, open face, with abundance of
brain-development, with plenty of shrewd intelligence, and not a little
of strong volition--the presentation of a strong, highly-gifted and
thoroughly self-radiant character, but the last face in the world to
have belonged to a man accustomed to sacrifice much to the graces or
elegancies of life. Yet this is the man who may be accused, not without
some show of reason, of having deemed it desirable to array saints and
martyrs in the attitudinizing airs of dancing-masters. Is not the
explanation of the inconsistency to be found in the fact that here also
the artist was representing not what he felt and was conscious of
himself, but what his imagination told him was likely to be the
expression of the feelings and consciousness of others?

Much as Signor Moretti has of Peruginesque in the treatment of his art,
his figures, especially his male figures, are free from the faults that
have been signalized. There is a robust simplicity about them that is
far removed from affectation of any kind. In a small darkened room
opening off his studio he showed us some portions of his restoration of
a painted window belonging to the east end of the church of the
Dominica