Painters of the Fifteenth Century, in the manner of painters of the Twentieth, took their models as they found them. If the perpetuation of the world’s loveliness be no sin,—and on that point there are diversities of human opinion, and one Law,—then the person who is graced with natural beauty incurs, not disgrace, but honour in allowing it to be preserved by painting or by sculpture. Perfect beauty does not seek concealment, but simply admits the world to share its joy, without emotion of vanity or shame, without regard to rank or dignity. Pauline Buonaparte Princess Borghese was the model for Canova’s Venus. Bernini modelled his David (in Villa Borghese) from his own yυμνότης, while Cardinal Barberini (afterwards the Lord Urban PP. VIII) held the mirror. That amiable rake Messer Rafael Sanzio da Urbino painted his baker’s daughter as Madonna. Messer Jacopo Sansovino sculptured his Dionusos from a lad called Lippo Fabri, who, from long posing bare, took cold and died of fever; and, in his last delirium, continually leaped from his bed to pose as the god to whom his life was sacrificed. Messer Michelangelo Buonarroti, lost in admiration of his model the son of Messer Francesco Raibolini of Bologna (detto Il Francia), with his naif and customary depreciation of his brother-painters, told the boy that his father made better men by night than by day. Messer Andrea Verrocchio did his slim lean David from one of his alert apprentices. Messer Luca Signorelli painted his own dead son. Messer Rafaele Sanzio himself, times without number, sat for his master Il Pinturicchio. The beautiful Simoneta of Florence was the Venus of Messer Alessandro Filipepi (detto Botticelli); and the sons of Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici (two of whom in after years wore the Triregno) did not disdain to sit as models for this master. All the works of art of the Borgian Era, representing saints and sinners, gods and demigods, eudaimones and kakadaimones, all obviously were portraits; the very imperfections, which the century of the Discovery of Man was too eager and too unsophisticated to plane away to fit arbitrary conventions, shew this: and volumes might be written of the models of great masters, who let their youth or beauty be set down for all time, and then achieved fame as Rafaele did, or Messer Simone Fiorentini’s (detto Donatello) nitid David or superb Saint George, or Messer Andrea del Sarto’s wistful Young Saint John. Wherefore, not only may it be admitted, but defended, that Madonna Giulia Orsini (nata Farnese), who had come to share with Madonna Lucrezia Borgia the distinction of being the fairest young mother in Rome, sat as model to Il Pinturicchio for the Θεοτόκος of the Borgia Tower. But, in proof of the ghastly ignorance or devilish malice which has sought to introduce an element of lubricity into this affair, it is necessary that three important facts should not go unconsidered. They are (α) that the Borgia Tower contained three or four large halls: