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THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. Chap. VII. impasto of a ruddy tinge, free and from a full brush. The drawing is poor, the lower limhs feebly rendered, the fingers of hands and feet in correct. A great inequality is obvious in the types, some being finer than the rest, S. Thomas even Raphaelesque. An inscription on the hem of his dress might with some difficulty he forced into the following order: “Ra. . . Ur. . . anno MDV.”, hut there is a cross mark between the D and the V. The V itself has a stroke on the right limh, and the letters have been overrun. The heads of S. Thaddeus, S. James and S. John are Peruginesque with Raphaelesque traits, those of S. Andrew and S. Philip not without beauty. The Saviour like the rest has a double balled forehead, prominent cheeks, and a parted chin in puffy contours exaggerated in S. Peter. The straight lined draperies have much of the Florentine, but they want style. The colour is that of a practised and coarse hand, which is neither Raphael’s nor Perugino’s. Amongst the names which suggest themselves, three may be selected. They are those of pupils of Vannucci, Giannicola Manni, Eusehio, and Gerino da Pistoia. The high forehead, the parted eyes and puffy drawing of thehead of Christ are like Manni’s, ex. gr. in the Perugia gallery and in the chapel of the Cambio. Eusebio is an imitator of Raphael with some of Manni’s peculiarities, a marrowy touch and sharp flesh tone. Gerino da Pistoia is, however, more likely to have been employed at 8. Onofrio than either. Although Vasari calls him a pupil of Pinturicchio; his panels at Pistoia are those of a disciple of Van nucci. In his picture of 1509 at S. Pietro of Pistoia, many figures recall Raphael’s first manner, and remind one of the fresco of S. Onofrio. His colour is also of the ruddy kind noticed in the latter. But further, the studies for four figures in the Last Supper have been preserved (they are on coloured paper, touched in white, exhi bited in the room), and testify in favour of Gerino as against Raphael. A painted frame surrounds the Last Supper. Within it are five busts of friars, of which the three, highest are Florentine and earlier in date than the two others or than the Supper. This cir cumstance would confirm the belief that Gerino, if he be the per son here engaged, repeated anew a composition which existed be fore on the same wall; and this presumption is strengthened again by the existence of an engraving in the library of Gotha which has been by Passavant given to Perugino (he assumed it to be taken from the fresco of S. Onofrio as it now stands), but which is a Florentine work of the close of the fifteenth century. The engra ving reproduces the attitudes, action, and extremities of the fresco in its present condition, but in a Florentine, not an Umbrian style. The architecture is not a colonnade and screen, but a closed room with windows. On the end of the seats are: a rider followed by a page, and the Capture on the Mount, and these are replaced in the fresco by an arabesque ornament. The question arises, where
