on its two sides the Trinity with Christ on the Cross, and the Creation of Eve.[*177] Though a mere wreck, it shows a novelty of composition and a delicacy of execution already distinguishing him from the manner of Perugino. [Footnote *176: This work is a copy of Raphael's picture by Lo Spagna. Cf. BERENSON, _The Study and Criticism of Italian Art_, vol. II., p. 1-22.] [Footnote *177: The only work of Raphael's left in Perugia is the fresco of Christ and Saints, in St. Severo, 1505.] The fame of these maiden efforts spread along the valley of the Tiber, and the novice was soon recalled to Perugia, to paint for the Oddi family an altar-piece of the Coronation of the Madonna, now with its predella in the Vatican Gallery. In rich and varied composition, it excels all antecedent representations of this favourite Umbrian theme, and establishes a decided advance beyond the standard of beauty adopted by Perugino. Now, too, he began his wonderful series of small devotional pictures, embodying the Madonna in conceptions of beauty which none other but the sainted limner of Fiesole has ever approached. On this his first emancipation from Umbria, he became acquainted with the classicism and naturalism then revolutionising art. At Siena, his perception of beauty was gratified by an exquisite Grecian statuary group of the Graces, which he transferred to his tablets, and afterwards reproduced in a picture. Tempted by the proximity of Florence, he seems to have then glanced at, rather than examined, those new elements which Masaccio and Verocchio had introduced, and which a host of able masters were enthusiastically developing.[178] [Footnote 178: The frequent contradictions of the many writers upon Raffaele throw a doubt upon most of his movements. Our rapid sketch has been compiled after a careful comparison of authorities, which we cannot stay to criticise or reconcile. *In 1504 Raphael went to Florence. The assertion that he accompanied Pinturicchio to Siena seems a mere invention of Sienese municipal vanity.] [Illustration: _Alinari_ ECCE HOMO _From the picture by Giovanni Santi in the Palazzo Ducale, Urbino_]