_Perugino._ St. Sebastian. One of the loveliest examples of the Umbrian master’s later manner. Contrasted with the Madonna and St. Rose it shows the distance covered by art during the painter’s lifetime. Observe its greater freedom and knowledge of anatomy. St. Sebastian, bound as usual to a pillar in a ruined temple, is pierced through with arrows. Face, figure, and expression are unusually fine for Perugino. Sebastian was the great saint for protection against the plague, and pictures containing him are almost always votive offerings under fear of that pestilence. Many in this gallery. The face here is finer than in any other presentation I know, except Sodoma’s in the Uffizi at Florence. 258. _Lombard or Piedmontese School._ Annunciation. An unusual treatment; the Madonna, as always, kneels at a _prie-dieu_, and starts away, alarmed and timid, at the apparition of the angel Gabriel. The action, as usual, takes place in a _loggia_, but the angel is represented as descending _in flight_ through the air, an extremely uncommon mode of depicting him. He bears the white lily of the Annunciation. The other details are conventional. Contrast with this subsequent Annunciations in this Gallery. L, are St. Augustin and St. Jerome; R, St. Stephen, bearing on his head, as often, the stones of his martyrdom, accompanied by St. Peter Martyr the Dominican, with the knife in his head. Both saints carry palms of martyrdom. A good picture in a hard, dry, local manner. Now cross over to the =opposite side= of the room, beginning at the bottom, in order to preserve the chronological sequence. 196. _School of Giotto._ Madonna in Glory, with angels. Compare this treatment carefully with Cimabue’s great picture close by, in order to notice the advance in art made in the interval. The subject and general arrangement are the same, but observe the irregularity in the placing of the angels, and the increased knowledge of anatomy and expression. Close by are several other =Giottesque pictures=, all of which should be closely examined; especially 425, _Vanni_, the same subject, for comparison. The little Giottesque Death of St. Bernard, in particular, is a characteristic example or type of a group which deals in the same manner with saintly obsequies. All of them will suggest explanations of later pictures. In all these cases, the saint lies on a bier in the foreground, surrounded by mourning monks and ecclesiastics. The key-note was struck by Giotto’s fresco of the Death of St. Francis at Santa Croce in Florence.