J. A. Symonds says of him that he is a kind of Umbrian Gozzoli, and in his clear and fluent presentation of contemporary life brings us into close relation with the men of his own time. No one loved better than Gozzoli to assemble contemporary celebrities; and in the feeling for incidents of everyday life, in the joy of living, in fondness for garrulous narrative, his frescoes must have been full of suggestion for the Umbrian master of the next half-century, who, in his love for the narrative and the picturesque, surpassed all who had gone before. In Florence, if he had made his trial there, he might have gained more of strong and true study, he might have learned the laws of grouping, of ærial perspective, he might have gained a better knowledge of anatomy, yet in mastering all these, he might have lost something that he possesses: that freshness of feeling which is the spring and sap of all art, that young and winning joy that carries him through scenes of magnificence without losing sense and spirit. There is in the art of Pintoricchio a direct simplicity of expression and gesture that saves him from conventionality and cloying sweetness. His persons are not above criticism as far as technicalities are concerned, but they have in them this, that they are occupied and absorbed in the business in hand. You may fancy at first that they are artificial, but that is merely their environment; they themselves are simple, they do not pose or look upwards or out of the picture with an affected appeal for admiration. This quality gives to Pintoricchio a truthfulness where he lacks depth. To the last he has a sincerity which underlies his conventionality, just as his dainty care in detail counterbalances his want of freedom and rhythm. His forms lack the nobility of Perugino's, his religious emotion is less deep, but he is not self-conscious, he has a freshness and raciness which saves him from fatiguing by monotonous sweetness. He does not make his paintings a series of excuses for the solution of scientific problems, so that they are more spontaneous, more the outcome of the man's natural unfettered inclination, than are the works of some of those who made greater discoveries in the field of painting.