air, Perugino painted among the prophets in the Money Changer's
Hall. A workshop indeed. Not merely the studio of a master and his
pupils, but an enormous manufactory of works of devotional art; the
themes of Perugino, the same saints, the same madonnas, the same angels,
in the same groups, for ever repeated in large and small, some mere
copies, others slightly varied or composed of various incoherent
portions, by the pupil; some half by the master, half by the pupil, some
possibly touched up by him, one or two wholly from his own exquisite
hand. Things of all degrees of merit and execrableness, to suit the
richest and the poorest; all could be had at that workshop, for Master
Pietro had the monopoly of the art, good bad, or indifferent, of the
country. You could order designs for wood carvings or silver ware;
you could hire church banners, of which store was kept to be let out
for processions at so much the hour. You could obtain men to set
up triumphal arches of cardboard, and invent moulds for ornamental
sweetmeats, like those of Astorre Baglioni's wedding; patterns,
doubtless also for embroidery and armour embossing; you could have a
young Raphael Santi set to repeating some Marriage of the Virgin for a
Sforza or a Baglioni, or some tattered smearer to copy a copy of some
madonna for a village church; or you could commission the master himself
to go to Rome and paint a wall of Pope Sixtus's Chapel. For there never
was a manufactory of art carried on more methodically or satisfactorily
than this one. There never was a commercial speculator who knew so well
how much good and bad he could afford and venture to give; who knew
his public so thoroughly. He had, in his youth and poverty, invented,
discovered (which shall we call it?) the perfection of devotional
painting, that which perfectly satisfied his whole pious Umbria, and
every pious man or woman of more distant parts: a certain number of
types, a certain expression, a certain mode of grouping, a certain
manner of colouring which constituted a perfect whole; a conception to
embody which most completely he had in his youth worked like a slave,
seeking, perfecting all that which belonged to the style: the clear,
delicate colour, the exquisite, never excessive finish, the infinitely
delicate modelling of finger and wrist, of eyelid and lip, the
diaphanous sheen of light, soft, scarcely coloured hair on brow and
temple and cheek; he had coolly turned away from everything