It is as a decorator that he holds his own most successfully among his contemporaries. It soon became apparent that no one could cover the walls of palace or chapel with an ornamentation so rich and gay, so advantageous to the position, so homogeneous in character. To find any _tout ensemble_ to compare as decoration with the Borgia Apartments we must look at early mosaics, at the opulence of the little church of San Prassede, or the peacock hues of San Vitale at Ravenna. To estimate his achievement we must weigh what he has made of those rooms, "si desespèrément carrées," or of the oblong and barn-like space of the Libreria in Siena. He is mainly empirical rather than scientific, even in his most successful moments, but that his want of drawing was due to insufficient study of the nude is shown by the fact that his touch is fine and strong, his faces, hands and feet, always well and firmly drawn, his outlines delicate and decisive. He individualises his faces, and the bystanders in his crowded scenes show a most interesting variety and reality. When not painting fresco he is constant to the use of _tempera_. Unfortunately, he is too much given to sacrifice the transparency and depth of his colour by a lavish use of retouching _à secco_. In order to gratify his love for brilliancy, he produces an opaque surface, and is apt to give us a sort of splendid gaiety in exchange for real depth. His use of his gorgeous pigments is extremely skilful, especially towards the middle period. In the Sixtine Chapel frescoes, he has hardly let himself go, and in the Siena Library he inclines to be gaudy and glaring; but in many of his scenes the greens and peacock-blues, the rich, soft rose-pinks, the purples and autumn gold are those of a man whose nature was keenly alive to the joy of colour. His use of embossed gold is dictated by the same natural bent towards the gay and decorative. This small, mean-looking, deaf man was rarely sensitive to fulness of life, to splendour, and the delight of the eye, and wherever he has covered a wall with his work, or left a panel or an altar-piece, we get a glance back at an age which was not afraid of frank magnificence, guided by a purer taste than we can boast. Pintoricchio never shows the ear in his female heads. In the men's it is large, placed high, with the inner cartilage strongly defined. The hand has a short metacarpus and long fingers, the thumb well separated, and the little finger hooked in Fiorenzo's manner. He paints with a full brush, and has a heavy, liquid touch in fresco, but in working in panel he shows a beautiful surface quality which oil painting could not surpass. CHAPTER III FIRST PERIOD IN ROME