n any Tuscan hills, that the
most perfect if not the greatest painter of the Renaissance grew up.
You may find some memory of that beautiful land of hills and quiet
valleys even in his latest work, after he had learned from every master,
and summed up, as it were, the whole Renaissance in his achievement. But
in four pictures here in the Pitti, it is the influence of Florence you
find imposing itself upon the art of Umbria, transforming it,
strengthening it, and suggesting it may be, the way of advance.
Something of the art of Pietro you see in the portraits of Madallena
Doni (59), Angelo Doni (61), and La Donna Gravida (229), something so
akin to the Francesco delle Opere of the Uffizi that it would not be
surprising to find the Madallena Doni, at any rate, attributed to
Perugino. Yet superficial though they be in comparison with the later
portraits, they mark the patient endeavour of his work in Florence, the
realism that this city, so scornful of _forestieri_, was forcing upon
him as it had already done on Perugino, who in the Francesco, the
Bracessi, and the two monks of the Accademia, touches life itself,
perhaps, only there in all his work. It is the influence of Florence we
seem to find too in the simplicity of the Madonna del Granduca (178).
Here is a picture certainly in the manner of Perugino, but with
something lost, some light, some beatitude, yet with something gained
also, if only in a certain measure of restraint, a real simplicity that
is foreign to that master. And then, if we compare it with the Madonna
della Sedia (151), which is said to have been painted on the lid of a
wine cask, we shall find, I think, that however many new secrets he may
learn Raphael never forgot a lesson. It is Perugino who has taught him
to compose so perfectly, that the space, small or large, of the picture
itself becomes a means of beauty. How perfectly he has placed Madonna
with her little Son, and St. John praying beside them, so that until you
begin to take thought you are not aware how difficult that composition
must have been, and indeed you never remember how small that _tondo_
really is. How eagerly these easel pictures of Madonna have been loved,
and yet to-day how little they mean to us; some virtue seems to have
gone out of them, so that they move us no longer, and we are indeed a
little impatient at their fame, and ready to accuse Raphael of I know
not what insincerity or dreadful facility. Yet we have only to look a