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The treatment is that peculiar to Peruzzi. It is full of forced activity and dash, yet essentially sculptural in feeling, the drapery especially being searched out for the sake of suggesting the under form. Equally hardy is the foreshortened position of the female in the next com partment, who with surprising wildness throws her head and body forward, stretching out the arm with the rib bands at which the steers are pulling, and holding with iron grip the side of her car. 1 Peruzzi’s power is not less evident in the representation of the muscular strength and gigantic exertion of Hercules coping with the lion, a scene in which he establishes a favourable contrast be tween himself and Antonio Pollaiuolo. 2 But Peruzzi did not confine himself to the lodge of the Farnesina. In the hall of the upper floor, which precedes the rooms adorned by Bazzi and Beccafumi, he paints the ceiling, with its tasteful cornice and mould ings resting on mimic caryatidae, the frieze held up by pilasters, and unreal windows, through the openings of which landscapes are depicted, the effect being, as Vasari says, to increase the apparent size of the place; 3 nor does he neglect the ornaments above the doors where the sup porters of scutcheons are made to stand in classic pose, and children play above the architrave, nor those of the chimney, on the mantel of which Vulcan is at his forge, nor the panellings in which gods and goddesses are placed. Moderns, it is true, sometimes affirm that Giulio Romano 1 This fresco has most of the I Siennese contorsion, the figure he-! ing at the same time too long and j slender. The character of Etrus can art is curiously marked in this as well as in the thinness of the limbs, and in the motion of the steers. The groundis starred blue. Between the steer’s legs are seven heads of the winds. The car runs along clouds. The right arm of the female and parts around it are restored. 2 The Hercules and lion are as an antique bronze, so powerfully gi ven is the action of the leg break ing the back of the beast. The monochrome framing and mouldings are very choice, and look as if they were real, an effect due at once to modelling and a judicious application of perspec tive. The gilt rosettes and the arms in the centre of the ceiling are the only parts in genuine re lief. The lilies of the Farnese fa mily were substituted for the Chigi scutcheon, when the Palace of the Farnesina changed hands. 3 Vas. VIII. 223.
