Though there seems to be but very slight evidence about the real abode of the painter, his studio has been fixed in the beautiful old corner palace with the red marble windows in the Via del Commercio off the Corso. But one place does as well as another to pin a legend to,
and this little house of mean appearance tucked away in a dark and somewhat dingy street, with only a marble slab to mark it, serves the purpose well enough. Indeed, if one believed Vasari, one could with ease imagine Perugino choosing such a spot as this to hide his wife, his crimes (?) and all his money in, and see him hurrying thither in the dusk of a December evening from some big church or city where he had been to paint an altar-piece for prince or pontiff. One can even picture the long dark cloak he wore to cover up his money bag, his little cap pressed low upon his rather cloudy forehead, and one can almost hear him chuckle as he eats his maccaroni and strokes the fair hair of the woman he so loved, thinking with the joy of malice of all the other women who would come to pray and weep before his saints and his Pietàs.