reatment of Signorelli's best work. The subject is conceived
with special feeling for its stateliness, Joseph standing by the side of
the Virgin to receive the gifts, as a Chamberlain might stand beside the
throne, while the earnest reverence of the kneeling King, who has cast
his crown at the feet of the Child, is most nobly rendered. The gold in
the brocaded robes is here slightly in relief. The face of the kneeling
King recalls that of the aged Apostle in "The Institution of the
Eucharist," Cortona, a painting dated 1512; a beautiful picture,
executed for the high altar of the Gesu, but which has now been removed
to the Cathedral. Like the other works in this choir it is very badly
lighted, and the photograph is also indistinct. Vasari writes of it: "In
the Compagnia del Gesu, in the same city (Cortona), he painted three
pictures, of which the one over the high altar is marvellous, where
Christ communicates the Apostles, and Judas puts the wafer in his
satchel."[73] At the end of a shallow hall, in the usual good
perspective, His head accentuated against the sky, as in Leonardo's
"Last Supper," Christ stands, and puts the sacred wafer in the mouth of
a kneeling Apostle. In the foreground Judas, with a crafty look, opens
his satchel. The composition is exceedingly fine, the twelve Apostles
making a stately frame for the central figure of Christ. The attitudes
and gestures are natural and dramatic, and the faces have individual
character.

The two other pictures of which Vasari speaks as having also been
painted for the Gesu, now the Baptistery, are--"The Nativity" (a coarse
and badly-painted school picture, having affinities with that of the
National Gallery, London, No. 1133), and a "Madonna and Saints," which
still remains in the Baptistery. Here the Virgin sits, with a Bishop on
either side, and two monks below. Dry and precise in composition, like
that of the Brera, and apparently painted with the assistance of pupils,
the Madonna herself is still very characteristic of the master, and not
unlike those of the Brera and the Florence Academy. The picture is in an
exceedingly ruined state, and the gabled top in which is painted God the
Father, though not without merit, does not belong to the original
painting, but is of a later date.

Lastly, we may place in this group, the broadly-painted _predella_,
which hangs now, badly lighted, in the sacristy of the Arezzo Cathedral.
It is unknown to what altar-piece it belong