Chap. VI. BONFIGLI. 143 ful nude of a fisherman taking pence, reveal a study of Piero della Francesca and of the Florentine school. The third subject, mangled as it is, preserves some in terest, because S. Louis is represented in it looking down from a circular glory in a foreshortened attitude, like that of the Eternal by Uccelli, or that of the angel in Fran cesca’s Vision of Constantine at Arezzo. The arch, above which the saint appears, might even confirm Vasari’s des cription of Bonfigii's visit to Rome. The fresco of the Death of S. Louis, is a composition of symmetrical order. The mendicant brothers surround the youthful saint, and mourn over him with decent grief, whilst males and females in lay costume stand in the aisles of the church in which the funeral cere mony is performed. The monks who bear the tapers or incense, move with some nature and animation. The architecture is drawn with a perspective skill which reveals the influence of Piero della Francesca; the figures remind one of those by Domenico Veniziano. They arc inferior to these, but like them they sin by shortness of stature and some vulgarity of features or expression. 1 The incidents from the life of S. Herculanus can only be understood by a reference to local legendaries, the Bollandists and Pez’s anecdotes being insufficient. These declare indeed, that the Perugian bishop was ordered to be decapitated and flayed by Totila, and that when the body was found again after forty days, and taken in pro cession to a consecrated resting-place, it showed a whole skin and no signs of corruption, whereas that of a child buried with it was in a state of putrefaction. In the right-hand side of one fresco the saint lies de capitated on the ground, again about to be consigned to the grave together with the child. But on the left, several 1 The upper part to the left, the lower to the light, of this fresco are scaled off.