nearly forgotten,
but remembered at the last moment, and included. But even so, the
terrible conqueror who held Italy beneath his feet was not contented,
and a fresh decree, of 1811, ordered more pictures to be sent for his
Paris collection. A certain Tofanelli was now the agent for further
spoliation, and by diligent search forty-eight more pictures were
squeezed out of unlucky Perugia, and in November of 1813 forwarded,
via Rome, to Paris. Napoleon had now more works of Perugino than he
could find place for in his gallery of the Louvre, and gave many of
them away to the provincial museums of France; and thus it happens
that the works of our master are distributed, in fragmentary condition
in panels from his famous altar-pieces, among the French provincial
cities--such towns as Bordeaux, Marseilles, Lyons, Grenoble, Nantes,
Rouen, and Caen, where they are practically inaccessible to the
average student--while only a small portion of the once rich
collection of his works remains within the Perugian Pinacoteca.

But fortunately his masterpiece in fresco painting within the Sala del
Cambio could not be so easily torn from the walls. I have already
alluded to the acceptance by the master in 1499 of this commission,
for which he had refused the decoration of Orvieto Duomo. The actual
space offered him to decorate by the Perugian bankers in their Sala
del Cambio was not very great, but the result was a thing of perfect
beauty--"a little gem" (I called it in my notes written at Perugia,
and published some years ago) "of decorative Renaissance art. It is a
small room, panelled with the loveliest tarsia work (this too from
Vannucci's design), and above these panels the master's frescoes. The
'Nativity' and 'Transfiguration' at the end of the room are among his
finest, ripest works, and on each side are the Prophets and Sibyls, or
heroes, kings, and sages of antiquity--Leonidas the Spartan, Trajan
the wise Roman emperor, Fabius 'Cunctator,' Socrates, Horatius, who
kept the bridge, and the Roman Camillus."

It is most probable that the whole scheme of decoration, and of these
classic sages and heroes in particular, with their guiding virtues
above, was supplied to the artist by the humanist Maturanzio,
Secretary to the "Priori" of Perugia, and acting under their orders;
while Maturanzio himself may have drawn his inspiration from a MS.
Cicero in the Perugian Library, in whose miniatures the four cardinal
virtues appear beside