Chap. VII. PIETRO PERUGINO. 201 The saints breathe contentment and sympathising tender ness. But the colouring is vigorous and masterly, of a pleasing richness in the flesh tending to that brownish ruddy tinge attractive in Antonello and the Bellini, and in the early Giorgiones; whilst the draperies are prepared and glazed with a perfect knowlege of the laws of con trast, and with great skill in technical handling. 1 The Virgin and child of S. Pietro Martire was finished in 1498. 2 It represents the Virgin seated in a landscape at tended by two angels in flight, and the infant Saviour on her lap blessing six brethren in white, kneeling in front. The child is a little fat and square, and the features of His mother are a little vulgar. But the ex pression and action are softly meditative, and this impres sion is heightened by the calm glow of evening which overspreads the groups, not with the vividness of that in the Christ at the Mount, but with a clearer, milder red dish brown, polished as enamel. It is another of those instances in which Perugino adapts the (echnica of his art to the rendering of an idea, and trusts for effect to colour rather than to form, emulating the Venetians who harmonize their tints with the incidents they depict. The system upon which all these panels were wrought was almost the perfection of that which had been inau gurated by the Peselli and the Pollaiuoli, improved by Verrocchio, by Leonardo and Perugino. It was not simple, nor was it acquired at once. Perugino prepared flesh with a warm brown tone which he worked into rotundity by successive strata, leaving 1 This picture was dismembered and taken by the French to Paris. The frame and a Pieta forming tlie pinnacle, remained in the Sala del Magistrate at Perugia, now in the Public Gallery, No. 32. The Madonna was returned at the peace of 1815, not to Perugia, but to Rome. It is in the Vatican and signed on the pedestal of the Vir gin’s throne: “Hoc Petrus de Chas- tro plebis pinxit”,seeVasari(VI.41.) 2 Since the text was written, the panel has been deposited in the Perugia gallery and numbered No. 35. The Brotherhood of S. Pietro Martire was originally called Con- fraternita di S. M. Novella, after wards della Consolazione. It ap pears from ann. Decemvirali for 1498 that the picture was painted in March of that year. Mariotti, ub. sup. p. 156.