Chap. VII. PIETRO PERUGINO. 189 were to be compliant as best suits the love we have ever borne to your community. And so we now again exhort and pray that you do reserve this place which is his due, to Maestro Pietro, and refrain from molesting him for the short time during which he has to expedite our affairs’’. 1 In the meanwhile the Orvietans had been in correspon dence with Pinturicchio who announced his arrival almost at the moment when they received Giuliano's letter. 2 Not venturing to offend so important a dignitary as the Cardinal, they obeyed his injunctions by keeping for Pe- rugino his place in the cappella S. Brizio; and Pinturic chio received instructions to labour in a different part of the cathedral. The only memory of this busy and interesting period in Perugino’s life is an altarpiece in the Albani Villa near Rome, the decorations of the Cardinal’s palace having perished. But this altarpiece alone with its date of 1491 gives us sufficient knowledge of his manner at the period. Its principal subject is the Nativity in the form which Perugino subsequently repeated with slight changes on various occasions; and this again is surmounted by three panels of the Crucifixion between the angel and the Virgin annunciate. The stable of Bethlehem is trans formed after the true Umbrian fashion into a wide and roomy inclosure protected from the weather by arches res ting on pillars in one corner of which the ox and the ass are penned behind a palisade. The infant Christ lies on the foreground in the middle of the floor with the Vir gin and S. Joseph on their knees, in rear of him, and two angels between them in adoration. In the aisles SS. Michael and John the Baptist, SS. George and Jerom, kneel and stand in prayer. The light pouring in from the openings to the left, casts pleasant shadows on a fine architecture and illumines a pretty distance of hills and 1 The letter is printed in original in“Alcuni Doenmenti artistici” &c. uh. sup. p. 17. The remaining facts respecting this period of Perugi no’s life may be found in Della Valle. Uuomo di Orvieto, p. 316.19. in com. Vas. VI. 68. and in Vermi- glioli’s Vita di Pinturicchio, ub. sup. app. pp. XXXV—XL. 2 In June 1492 (com. Vas. V. 279).
