With a mind thus prepared, and with the encouraging example of the Feltrian court, where talent and genius were sure passports to patronage and distinction, he was sent to study at Perugia soon after his father's death. This bereavement, which clouded his domestic peace not less than his artistic prospects, occurred in 1494, and was immediately followed by the loss of his maternal grandfather and grandmother, leaving him in the hands of a selfish and litigious stepmother. At this juncture, his guardian and paternal uncle Bartolomeo judiciously selected as a master for him Pietro Vannucci, called Perugino,[*173] the tender melancholy of whose candid and unimpassioned countenances contradict Vasari's wanton libels on his fair name, not less than a motto on his self-limned portrait, first noted by Mr. Ruskin, which indicates his belief that the fear of God is the foundation of artistic excellence.[*174] Whatever difference of opinion regarding the merits of that painter may have originated in the occasional inequality of the works attributed to him, no contemporary sent forth more scholars of excellence, or so faithfully maintained the integrity of Christian sentiment against ever increasing innovations. Unfortunately we are possessed of no authentic particulars regarding the interval which young Sanzio spent in a studio so congenial to his nature, or the paintings in which he had a hand; and thus those years most important to the formation of his character and style are a blank in his biography.[*175] At Perugia and elsewhere there are a few devotional pictures ascribed to him, by tradition or as signed with his initials; but even were their authenticity less doubtful, their insignificance and entire conformity to the type of Perugino would almost remove them from criticism. The admitted fact that Pinturicchio, a man of high genius, and about thirty years his senior, had recourse to the beardless Raffaele for designs, when employed to paint the cathedral-library at Siena, establishes thus early the two leading features of his after life, supereminent ability and conciliatory manners; and two of these drawings remain to prove how superior were the conceptions of the boy, to the execution of his matured comrade, excellent as that beyond all question is. He probably attended Perugino to Fano in 1497, when painting those lovely altar-pieces in S. Maria Nuova, which yield to no other production of his placid and expressive pencil, although we can scarcely accept a tradition which ascribes to the pupil some Madonna groups in the predella, upon the ground of their excelling his master's capacity.