gino has written his name, _Petrus Perusinus
Pinxit, An. 1493_. It is in such a work as this that Perugino is really
least great. Painted to order, as we may think, it is so full of
affectation, of a kind of religiosity, that there is no room left for
sincerity. And yet how well he has composed this picture after all, so
that there is no sense of crowding, and the sun and sky are not so far
away. Is it perhaps that in an age that has become suspicious of any
religious emotion we are spoiled for such a picture as this, finding in
what it may be was just a natural expression of worship to the simple
Friars of S. Domenico long ago, all the ritualism and affectation in
which we should find it necessary to hide ourselves before we might
approach her, as she seemed to them, a Queen enthroned, _causa nostrae
Laetitiae_, between two saints whose very names we find it difficult to
remember? How often in our day has Perugino been accused of insincerity,
yet it was not so long ago when he lived. Almost all his life he was
engaged in painting for the Church those things which were most precious
in her remembrance. If men found him insincere, it is strange that among
so much that was eager and full of sincerity his work was able to hold
its own. His pupil Raphael, that most beloved name, is represented here
in the Uffizi only by the Madonna del Cardellino (1129); for the other
works attributed to him in the Tribuna are not his. The picture is in
his early manner, and was painted about 1548. It has, like so much of
Raphael's work, suffered restoration; and indeed these compositions from
his hand no longer hold us as they used to do, whether because of that
repainting or no, I know not. It is as a portrait painter we think of
Raphael to-day, and as the painter of the Stanze at Rome; and therefore
I prefer to speak of him with regard to his work in the Pitti Gallery
rather than here. With him the Umbrian School passed into the world.

IV. THE VENETIAN SCHOOL

Nearly all the Venetian pictures were bought in 1654 by Cardinal
Leopoldo de' Medici from Messer Paolo del Sera, a Florentine merchant in
Venice. More truly representative of the Renaissance, its humanism and
splendour, than any other school of painting in Italy, the earlier works
of that great Venetian School are not seen to advantage in the Uffizi.
There is nothing here by Jacopo Bellini, nothing by his son Gentile; nor
any work from the hands of Antonio or Bartolommeo Vivarini,