178 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. Chap. VIE Zipporah”, the “Baptism of Christ”, and Christ’s de livery of the keys to Peter”. Modern writers have frequently assigned the first of these to Signorelli. 1 It contains several incidents in one frame; the angel appearing to Moses and ordering him to circumcise Gershom, the circumcision and the wed ding-dance in the distance. The conception and setting, and the landscape, are Peruginesque, as well as the ac tion and shape of the figures. But Perugino’s admirers might suggest, that finish, harmony, and balance are still less striking in this than in the two other subjects. There is more hardness and angularity than Perugino would have given, and though resolute movement is lent to the angel arresting the progress of the patriarch, heavi ness deprives the children’s forms of their greatest charm. The truth may be that Perugino did not devote much of his own labour to this bit. The children may have been by Della Gatta, and he again may have been second to Perugino’s assistant Pinturicchio. Pinturicchio accom panied his master to Rome, under very favorable condi tions. He was a Perugian by birth and education. He had followed with moderate talent the lessons of Bonfigli and Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, and afterwards joined the ate lier of Perugino. 2 He had all the qualities that should be sought in a subordinate; and might have become in dispensable to one who undertook large commissions and required an orderly superintendent for his apprentices. It was natural that Perugino should take him into partner ship, and give him a third of his profits. 3 Nor do the Sixtine frescos discountenance the belief that the two men stood in this relation to each other in 1484. The frescos of Pinturicchio in the Borgia Chambers and at Araceli warrant us in believing that it was so; they fully explain how Pinturicchio prepared himself for independ ence by a constant intercourse with Yannucci and a ju- 1 Annot. Vas. VI. 143. 3 lb. V. 268.
