and a drawing for the lion in a scene from the life of St. Jerome in the same church. We thus have no fewer than thirteen heads and figures, clearly recognisable as studies for frescoes painted before Raphael was six years old. [Illustration: _Private photo_] [_Venice_ STUDY OF HEADS FOR THE "JOURNEY OF MOSES"] The drawings, fine and delicate as they are, have the stiffness, the careful, square-crossed hatching which is found in others by Pintoricchio, also his shape of hand and foot, and the narrow, elongated forms and in-bent knees. Pintoricchio was now twenty-eight. He must already have produced a great deal of work, but not only have we no trace of it, but what is left is almost all known to be of later date. However obscure his life before he came to Rome, his proceedings after that are well known, and there is hardly a year unaccounted for, or which cannot be almost certainly filled up from inference. Rome had no cinque-cento painters of her own; but none the less, the great traditions of the past, which that century was fast reviving, made her the Mecca of the artists of Italy. That the two frescoes in the Sixtine Chapel were Pintoricchio's first great commission is probable, and it must have been with exultation that he set to work to give free play to his decorative instincts on the large bare walls. Though the whole is imbued with Perugino's spirit, and full of _motifs_ copied from him, the composition is not the least like his calm, glowing landscapes and well-ordered, symmetrical groups. The background is all reminiscent of Fiorenzo--the toppling rocks, the little bushy trees, the joyous air of the little figures frolicking on the hillside, the palms and cypresses, the beautifully shaped hollow of the valley, the falcon in the air pursuing smaller birds. The crowded groups are in Pintoricchio's style; the want of concentration of interest, the narrative spirit running through the whole are just what were most dear to his genius. There has been much discussion as to whether his master helped him. Did Perugino paint the figure of the woman busied with the rite of Circumcision, and of Moses looking on? Or did he execute the heads of any of the Florentine colony who are brought in, and who might have preferred to have their portraits from the hand of the master rather than from that of the pupil? I can find very little trace of Perugino's own hand, unless it be in the head of Moses on the right, in which the execution of the hair is more in his manner, though not nearly as fine and rippling as he paints it in the frescoes of the keys. The action of the angel in the centre is quite in the manner of Pintoricchio, and Perugino never would have placed the hand of Moses in such an awkward attitude of expostulation. The children are like his in the Buffalini Chapel in the Libreria and Borgia apartments, and contrast favourably with Perugino's fat, unshapely babes. As a whole, it would be difficult