Chap. X. DOMENICO AND ORAZIO ALFANI. 365 his agent in Perugia. An undated letter is preserved in the Wicar collection at Lille, in which Raphael requests Domenico to apply to a lady of the name of Atalanta at Perugia for a debt due to him; and it has been very fairly suggested that the lady is no other than Madonna Atalanta Baglioni, for whom the Entombment in the Pa lazzo Borghese at Rome was finished in 1507. Some approach to certainty as to the date applicable to this epistle may be found in a drawing of the Holy Family at the back of it, the style of which points to a period little later than 1507. 1 Raphael thus repaid the small services he required from his friends at Perugia with de signs which they treasured up, as we shall see, for future use. Domenico Alfani willingly undertook, we may believe, the commissions entrusted to him, and for the rest, wor shipped the style of Raphael with great and meritorious constancy. He became a registered master at Perugia in 1510; 2 painted in Berto's company pennons for trum peters and a shield with the arms of Leo the Tenth in 1511 and 1513, 3 and gradually rose, as years went by, to the higher dignities of altarpieces. Towards middle age, having a family of natural children whom he caused to be legitimized, 4 he took his son Orazio into partner ship, and they laboured in common. Nor does Orazio appear to have worked on his own account till late in life. For this reason the works of the two Alfani remained almost alike and bore the stamp of one atelier. The ten dency to copy Raphael is perceptible in their pictures for years after his death, and only made way in part, at a later period, for that of Rosso who, having been hospi tably treated by Alfani as he fled to Perugia from the sack of Rome in 1527, returned his kindness with advice and even with cartoons for whole altarpieces. 5 That artists 1 The letter in full is in Pungi- leoni, in facsimile p. 293, and p. 79. printed. 2 Mariotti; Lett. 241. ITis name in the register is: “Domenico Pa- ridis Pander! Alfani”. 3 lb. ib. 242. 4 In 1520. ib. ib. 250—1. 5 Vasari, Life of Rosso, Vol. IX. p. 73.