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Chap. XI. PERUZZI. 385 bably without friends, he quickly achieved a position, and settled in the capital, a favourite of his countrymen as well as of the highest dignitaries in the church. Two decorations of great extent and importance, com pleted before the lapse of the first ten years of the cen tury, give an exact view of his progress as well as of the direction taken by his labours. In the semidome and tribune of S. Onofrio, an Eternal, a Coronation of the Virgin, and a Virgin amongst saints, at the sides of which the Epiphany and Massacre of the Innocents are depicted, leave no doubt as to the way in which his style was formed. The Eternal is like Peruzzi’s at S. Croce in Gerusalemme. The angels remind one of Pinturicchio. The apostles about the Coronation, more lively in movement than those of Bernardino, recall the Leonardesque of Bazzi. In the central Madonna, and the Massacre, but particularly in the Adoration, where the distant episodes betray the influence of the Perugian, and the mask of the infant Christ is that of the Lombard, we trace the same contrast. 1 Nor is it confined to the tribune, being exhibited with equal distinctness in one of the chapels. 2 being at Rome in 1506, appoints Paccliiarotti his agent at Sienna. An not. Vas. VIII. 220. f Mancini (in Della Valle, Lett. Sen. III. .182) would assign these frescos entirely to Pinturicchio. Titi (annot. Vas. VIII. 221) sug gests Peruzzi for the semi-dome, Pinturicchio for the wallpaintings beneath it. Vasari, however, says (VIII. 220): “Peruzzi did the choir ofS. Onofrio 11 ; and there is one hand in the whole work. The semi-dome subjects are all on gold ground, in courses. Below the Eternal in four spaces, angels; beneath these, the Coronation between the twelve apostles and twelve sybils. In the central fresco of the tribune, the Virgin (mantle repainted) is en throned between SS. John the Baptist, Jerom, a female, and Ono frio, the donor kneeling in the VOL. III. foreground. The head of the Bap tist is Leonardesque. A dais of gold hangs over the Virgin’s head. The fresco of the Massacre com prises also a Flight into Egypt, the landscape full of incidents and small figures as in Pinturicchio. In this as in the Adoration on the left, the dresses are almost all re painted, and in the latter, the landscape is renewed. The lower part of the tribune pieces is quite new. The colour, generally, is freely handled in a warm yel lowish tone. 2 First chapel to the right, where the Eternal in benediction, high above the altar, with three angels on a blue ground (repainted) is in the character of the choir fres cos. The ceiling may contain paintings of the same type; it is now covered with a painted can- 25
