The Inner Court, the =Cour du Mûrier=, leads to another hall, the =Salle de Melpomène=, entered on Sundays direct from the Quai Malaquais. This room also contains a large number of =copies= which are valuable for study to those who have not seen the originals, and which will often recall forgotten facts in new connections to those who _have_ seen them. I would call special attention, from the point of view of this book, to the good copies of Raphael’s and Perugino’s =Marriage of the Virgin=: as the originals are respectively at Milan and Caen (two places sufficiently remote from one another), the composition of the two can be better compared here than under any other circumstances. As examples of development, I shall notice them briefly. Perugino’s is, of course, the older work. It was painted for a chapel in the Cathedral at Perugia, where it still hung when Raphael painted his imitation of it. First look carefully at both works, and then read these remarks upon them. The Sposalizio or Marriage of the Virgin, one of the set subjects in the old series of the Life of Mary, and often used as an altar-piece, consists traditionally of the following features. In the centre, stands the High Priest, wearing his robes and ephod—or what the particular painter takes for such: he joins the hands of Joseph and the Madonna. Joseph stands always on the L side of the picture, which Perugino has rightly assigned to him; though Raphael, already revolutionary, has reversed this order. He holds in his hand a staff, which has budded into lily flowers—the tradition (embodied in the Protevangelion) being that the High Priest caused the various suitors for Mary’s hand to place their staffs in the Holy of Holies, as had long before been done in the case of Aaron, intending that he whose staff budded should become the husband of the Holy Virgin. Joseph’s put forth leaves and flowers; and so this staff, either flowering or otherwise, is the usual symbol by which you can recognise him in sacred art. Behind Joseph stand the other disappointed suitors, one or more of whom always breaks his staff in indignation. Behind Mary stand the attendant maidens—the Virgins of the Lord—together with Our Lady’s mother, St. Anne, recognisable by her peculiar head-dress and wimple. (Compare Leonardo in the Salon Carré.) A temple always occupies the background. Perugino took the main elements of this scene from earlier painters. (You will find numerous examples in the churches and galleries at Florence and elsewhere.) But he transformed it in accordance with his peculiar genius and his views of art, substituting a round or octagonal temple of Renaissance architecture for the square Gothic building of earlier painters. Such round buildings were the conventional representation of the Temple at Jerusalem among Renaissance artists. The peculiar head-dress and the balanced position are also characteristic of Perugino. How closely