His superiority, as shown in the fresco of the Giving of the Keys to Peter, Figure 118, and in numerous works of his forty-two remaining years, is so uniform and almost monotonous that its greatness has until recently passed unnoticed. Only such critics as Mr. Berenson and Professor Wölfflin have done him full justice. He worked upon perfectly clear and conscious ideals of simplicity, symmetry, and spaciousness; in all of which he took issue with his times. Rejecting the picturesque richness and confusion of the Early Renaissance, he took counsel of the Byzantine painters and of Fra Angelico at San Marco. They taught him the worth of simple geometrical forms of figure composition, and how to sacrifice details to broad effects. That his groups disposed in simple pyramids, oblongs, or ovals should not seem too bare, he cunningly varied the positions of the figures, thus relieving the severity of the underlying symmetry. Every tilted head, pointed foot and swaying thigh has its precise compositional value. As for the figures, there is no strenuousness of draughtsmanship, they are simply good enough. A principle of artistic economy, alien to the spirit of the moment, rules here as elsewhere. [Illustration: FIG. 178. Perugino. Mystical Crucifixion. Fresco.—_Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi. Florence._ ] So far he appears as a critic and amender of the Early Renaissance style. His positive contribution was a particularly spacious and lovely sort of landscape, an immensity of light and air to set behind the restricted patterns of his figures. This landscape is a beautiful generalization of the scenery of the upper Tiber valley. The forms are few. Feathery trees mark the middle distance; a river valley opens gently with interlocking banks toward distant blue mountains. Above a silvery horizon, the heavens gradually deepen to an intense blue, accentuated by sparse floating clouds. There are few colors, a warm brown, a fresh green, a paler and a deeper blue, a variety of grays. With these simple means is attained a sense of infinite space and of encompassing peace. All these perfections are in the great frescoed Crucifixion Figure 178, in the convent of Santa Maria Maddelena dei Pazzi, at Florence. The date is 1495, Perugino’s fifty-second year. The lyrical quietism of the effect rests on delicate evasions of the very formal symmetry. Such features as the tilted head of the Saint John and the three trees at the left balancing the Magdalen at the right of the cross are essential. Indeed any slight change either in the position of the figures or the lines of the landscape would produce a discord. [Illustration: FIG. 179. Perugina. Enthroned Madonna.—_Vatican._ ]