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contempt, “ Goffo nell’ arte,” that is, a mere
bungler; for which affront Pietro summoned him
before the magistrates, but came off with little
honour. He was no longer what he had been.
Such was his love of money, or such his mistrust
of his family, that when moving from place to
place he carried his beloved gold with him; and
being on one occasion robbed of a large sum, he
fell ill, and was like to die of grief. It seems,
however, hardly consistent with the mean and
avaricious spirit imputed to him, that having mar-
ried a beautiful girl of Perugia, he took great
delight in seeing her arrayed, at home and abroad,
in the most costly garments, and sometimes dressed
her with his own hands. To the reproach of
avarice—too well founded—some writers have
added that of irreligion: nay, two centuries after
his death they showed the spot where he was buried
in unconsecrated ground under a few trees, near
Pontignano, he having refused to receive the last
sacraments : this accusation has been refuted ; and
in truth there is such a divine, beauty in some of
the best pictures of Perugino, such exquisite purity
and tenderness in his Madonnas, such an expression
of enthusiastic faith and devotion in some of the
heads, that it would be painful to believe that there
was no corresponding feeling in his heart. In one
or two of his pictures he has reached a degree of