Pinturicchio, and combines a most enticing softness and beauty with his coarse touch and copious vehicle; and would alone suffice to show where he obtained his first lessons. The catalogue of the Berlin Museum justly assigns to Fiorenzo di Lorenzo a Virgin and child on gold ground, bearing the date of 1481, pleasing for the gentleness of the principal figure. Something in the cast of the draperies might suggest that the painter had been in contact with a Florentine. 1 But the value of the piece is not alone due to its being by Fiorenzo di Lorenzo. It leads us to judge with some certainty of an Adoration of the Magi in S. Maria Nuova of Perugia, which Vasari 2 and subsequent writers have called by the name of Peru- gino. It is just to the historian of Italian art, as well as to Rumohr, to add that they do not consider this al- tarpiece as anything else than a juvenile production of the great master. 3 But it would be truer to say that the artist is an old hand than that he is a beginner. The Umbrian manner here is that of Fiorenzo improved by time and by the example of the rising Perugians, embodying more delicate sentiment than is to be found in his earlier period, and a nearer relation than before to Pinturicchio. 4 Several peculiarities in it are those of Fiorenzo; and as such we should lay stress on the composition which is somewhat stiff and formal, on the drawing which searches out the foi - ms with a certain hardness and angularity, on the faces which are in a measure rigid and monotonous, on the shape of the hands and articulations that bend strangely, and on dra peries of which the breadth is injured by frequent and 1 Berlin Cat. No. 129. Gold ground, inscribed: “MCCCCLXXXI”. 2 Vasari, Vol. VI. p. 42. 3 Rumohr, Forschungen II, 339. This piece is also assigned to Pe- rugino byMezzanotte (life of Peru- gino ub. sup. p. 15) and by Passa- vant (Raphael ub. sup. I. 489). It has been transferred, since the above was written, to the Peru gia gallery under the No. 39. with the name of Domenico Ghirlan daio! 4 Vermiglioli cites a ms. of the eighteenth century, a chronicle of the convent of S. Maria Nuova, in which it is stated that the adora tion of the Magi was painted in 1521 for Camillo di Braccio Ba- glioni (Verm. Vita di Pinturicchio ub. sup. p. 212.)
