"As the aged artist," says Crowe, "laboured at Fontignano, industrious to the close, a plague broke out in the Perugia district and ravaged the country. A disgraceful panic over-spread the land. It was decreed that the ceremonies of religion should be omitted in all cases where death ensued from the contagion. Perugino died and was buried in a field at Fontignano ... and no one knows where lie the bones of Pietro Perugino." Later documentary evidence, which is quoted by the above authors, and at greater length by Milanesi in his edition of "Vasari's Lives," has here overthrown the statement by Vasari that "Pietro, having come to the age of seventy-two years, ended the course of his life in Castello della Pieve, where he was honourably buried in the year 1524." We know now that his sons (1524) endeavoured to have their father's body brought from his hasty burial-place to be interred in S. Agostino at Perugia; but, in the disturbed state of central Italy during this epoch of foreign invasion, the pious wish was never fulfilled.

When we think with what care and expense Pietro had once prepared his last resting-place in S. Maria de' Servi at Florence, this tragedy of his unknown and hurried burial seems the more sad. He survives in his art; and that is a complete vindication, an undying memorial. In these pages we have traced his progress from his first great commission of the Sistine Chapel, with its dignified grouping and sense of air and space, through the tender beauty of his altar-pieces, the simplicity and breadth of his fresco work—the Nativity of the Villa Albani, the Crucifixion of S. Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, the Pietà of the nuns of S. Chiara, the altar-piece of the Certosa of Pavia—till, in his great decorative commission at Perugia of the Sala del Cambio, in the year 1500, he seemed to reach the summit of his creative power, and climb down from thence, though by no means immediately or conclusively, to these faded and yet exquisite frescoes, with which, in his own fading years, he wreathed the little hill-cities of his native Umbria. And we noted him as a complete master of his art, even though he might willingly abide within a certain religious convention; we saw that the master of the Delivery of the Keys within the Sistine, the great portrait artist, whose hand has left us those forceful heads of Francesco delle Opere, of the Abbot Baldasarre, and Don Biagio, the painter of the Albani and Certosa altar-pieces, the decorator of the Cambio, had nothing to fear in his powers of art creation from the very greatest of his time.

But after we have said all this, we must own that his special place within that galaxy of genius of the greatest Italian art is best described by a writer to whose appreciative criticism I have always given my sincere admiration; for Pietro's task it was "to create for the soul amid the pomps and passions of this world a resting-place of contemplation, tenanted by saintly and seraphic beings. No pain comes near the folk of his celestial city; no longing poisons their repose; they are not weary, and the wicked trouble them no more. Their cheerfulness is no less perfect than their serenity; like the shades of Hellas, they have drunk Lethæan waters from the river of content, and all remembrance of things sad or harsh has vanished from their minds.... In the best work of Perugino, the Renaissance set the seal of absolute perfection upon pietistic art."

"Masterpieces in Colour" Series

Artist. Author.
BELLINI. George Hay.
BOTTICELLI. Henry B. Binns.
BOUCHER. C. Haldane MacFall.
BURNE-JONES. A. Lys Baldry.
CARLO DOLCI. George Hay.
CHARDIN. Paul G. Konody.
CONSTABLE. C. Lewis Hind.
COROT. Sidney Allnutt.
DA VINCI. M. W. Brockwell.
DELACROIX. Paul G. Konody.
DÜRER. H. E. A. Furst.
FRA ANGELICO. James Mason.
FRA FILIPPO LIPPI. Paul G. Konody.
FRAGONARD. C. Haldane MacFall.
FRANZ HALS. Edgcumbe Staley.
GAINSBOROUGH. Max Rothschild.
GREUZE. Alys Eyre Macklin.
HOGARTH. C. Lewis Hind.
HOLBEIN. S. L. Bensusan.
HOLMAN HUNT. Mary E. Coleridge.
INGRES. A. J. Finberg.
LAWRENCE. S. L. Bensusan.
LE BRUN, VIGÉE. C. Haldane MacFall.
LEIGHTON. A. Lys Baldry.
LUINI. James Mason.
MANTEGNA. Mrs. Arthur Bell.
MEMLINC. W. H. J. & J. C. Weale.
MILLAIS. A. Lys Baldry.
MILLET. Percy M. Turner.
MURILLO. S. L. Bensusan.
PERUGINO. Selwyn Brinton.
RAEBURN. James L. Caw.
RAPHAEL. Paul G. Konody.
REMBRANDT. Josef Israels.
REYNOLDS. S. L. Bensusan.
ROMNEY. C. Lewis Hind.
ROSSETTI. Lucien Pissarro.
RUBENS. S. L. Bensusan.
SARGENT. T. Martin Wood.
TINTORETTO. S. L. Bensusan.
TITIAN. S. L. Bensusan.
TURNER. C. Lewis Hind.
VAN DYCK. Percy M. Turner.
VAN EYCK. J. Cyril M. Weale.
VELAZQUEZ. S. L. Bensusan.
WATTEAU. C. Lewis Hind.
WATTS. W. Loftus Hare.
WHISTLER. T. Martin Wood.

Others in Preparation.