Raphael, who, Umbrian though he be, is really a Roman painter,
full of the thoughts of a world he had made his own.

Here, in the Uffizi, Gentile da Fabriano is represented by parts of an
altar-piece, four isolated saints, St. Mary Magdalen, St. Nicholas of
Bari, St. John Baptist, and St. George. It is rather in the beautiful
work of Piero della Francesca, and of Signorelli, in the rare and lovely
work of Melozzo da Forli, in the sweet and holy work of Perugino, the
perfect work of Raphael, that Umbria is represented in the Uffizi, than
in the mutilated altar-piece of Gentile da Fabriano.

Piero della Francesca was born about 1416 at the little town of Borgo
San Sepolcro, just within the borders of Tuscany towards Arezzo.[124] He
was a great student of perspective, a friend of mathematicians, of Fra
Luca Paccioli, for instance, who later became the friend of Leonardo da
Vinci. His work has force, and is always full of the significance of
life. Influenced by Paolo Uccello, founding his work on a really
scientific understanding of certain laws of vision, of drawing, his work
seems to have been responsible for much that is so splendid in the work
of Signorelli and Perugino. Nor is he without a faint and simple beauty,
which is altogether delightful in his pictures in the National Gallery,
for instance the Nativity and the Baptism of our Lord. Here, in the
Uffizi, are two portraits from his hand--Count Federigo of Urbino, and
his wife Battista Sforza (1300), painted in 1465. Splendid and full of
confidence, they are the work of a man who is a consummate draughtsman,
and whose drawing here, at any rate, is a thing of life. On the back of
these panels Piero has painted an allegory, or a trionfo, whose meaning
no one has yet read. The Uffizi has lately been enriched by a work of
his pupil, that rare painter, Melozzo da Forli. Two panels of the
Annunciation, very beautiful in Colour and full of something that seems
strange, coming from that Umbrian country, so mystical and simple, hang
now with the portraits of Piero. Nor is the work of Melozzo da Forli's
pupil, Marco Palmezzano, whose facile work litters the Gallery of Forli,
wanting, for here is a Crucifixion (1095) from his hand, certainly one
of his more important pictures.

Pietro Vanucci, called Il Perugino, was born about 1446 at Castel della
Pieve, some twenty-six miles from Perugia. The greatest master of the
Umbrian School, for we are content to call Raphael a Roman