For nine years Raphael worked under Perugino at Perugia, studying perspective and every department of art, and winning the love of both master and pupils. When he was seventeen, Passavant, in his life of Raphael, says, the young artist painted his first works, his master being in Florence: a banner for the church of the Trinita of Città di Castello, and the "Crucifixion." The banner has the "Trinity" on one sheet of canvas, and the "Creation of Man" on the other. The "Crucifixion" was bought by Cardinal Fesch at Rome, and at the sale of his paintings, in 1845, was purchased for about twelve thousand five hundred dollars. It is now in Earl Dudley's collection. About this time the "Coronation of the Virgin" was painted for Madonna Maddalina degli Oddi, a lady of great influence, who obtained for Raphael several commissions, concerning which he expresses great joy in his letters. How many are willing to employ an artist after he is famous; how few before! A woman had the heart and the good sense to help him in these early years, and she helped the whole art world thereby. This picture was kept in the Franciscan church at Perugia until 1792, when it was sent to Paris, but was restored to Italy by the treaty of 1815, and is now in the Vatican. For a friend of Perugia he painted the beautiful Connestabile Madonna. "The mother of the Saviour," says Passavant, "a figure of virginal sweetness, is walking in the country, in early spring, when the trees are still bare, and the distant mountains are covered with snow. She is walking along pensively, reading in a little book, in which the child in her arms also looks attentively. Nothing could be found more exquisite. Everything in it shows that Raphael must have devoted himself to it with especial ardor." This picture, only six and three-fourths inches square, was sold in 1871 to the Emperor of Russia for sixty-six thousand dollars. Raphael left the studio of Perugino in the beginning of 1504, before he was twenty-one, and painted for the Franciscans, at Città di Castello, the "Marriage of the Virgin," now the chief ornament of the Brera gallery at Milan, and called the "Sposalizio." "The Virgin is attended by five women, and St. Joseph by five young men who were once Mary's suitors. The despair of the lovers is shadowed forth by the reeds they hold; they will never flower; and the handsomest youth is breaking his across his knees."