turanzio, and on the other side the words _Anno
Salut. MD_ give the date of the work's completion--the central date,
as we may fairly take it, of Perugino's genius, and his life-work in
art. It is the moment when he climbs the hill-top--this fateful year
that divides the century--and stands upon the highest ground;
henceforth for him too, as for his country, the slow years mark the
footsteps of decline.

III

Rafaelle Sanzio of Urbino had lost his mother, Magia Ciarla, in 1491,
and his father, Giovanni Santi, three years later. It was not long
after this that he was placed by his relatives for instruction in
Perugino's famous workshop at Perugia, and we may safely assume that
he was there during part of the master's richly creative period which
we have just traversed, and that his hand was busied, along with those
of other pupils, in the paintings of the frescoes of the Sala del
Cambio.

[Illustration: PLATE VII.--THE DEAD CHRIST

(In the Academy of Fine Arts, Florence)

Vasari mentions at some length Pietro's work for the Convent of the
Gesuati, and in doing so describes this picture: "A Pieta--that is to
say, Christ in the lap of Our Lady with four figures around--as good
as any painted in his manner." The convent seems to have suffered much
from its position without the Porta a Pinti in the siege of Florence,
and both this painting and the "Christ in the Garden" eventually found
their way to the Academy. Pietro was a good friend of the Gesuati
monks, and was a good deal at one time at the convent. Date of this
work, about 1493.]

Among these pupils Vasari mentions, beside Rafaelle, the
Florentines--Rocco Zoppo, Baccio, and Francesco Ubertino (the latter
best known by his surname of Bacchiacca), Giovanni di Pietro (called
Lo Spagna), Andrea di Luigi (called L'Ingegno), Eusebio di San
Giorgio, Benedetto Caporali, and others. We have already noted
Bernardino di Betto, called Pinturicchio, as his assistant, and later
as a sort of partner and superintendent of these young apprentices;
and there seems little doubt that, after the completion of the Cambio
frescoes and Perugino's subsequent return to Florence, Pinturicchio
took young Rafaelle with him to Siena, as an assistant in his great
commission there (1502) to decorate the library of Cardinal
Piccolomini. In Perugino the brilliant but most assimilative young
student found just the master he needed. He would have been crushed
under the masterful force, the re