supported by two _putti_, the only part of the work which Vasari deigns to notice. Inside, the three great halls on the ground floor, though partly whitewashed and even built up, keep some remains of past splendour. On a beam can still be read the date at which the palace was finished, 1490. There is still a good deal of the original gilding left on the wooden ceilings, and where the whitewash has been scraped away, shadowy heads of apostles are to be seen, and fine and delicate Renaissance ornament. The whole resembles the designs for the Colonna Palace, and what can still be made out appears to be by the master himself, elegant and decisive in touch. All sorts of animals are made use of--a winged stag drinks from a cornucopia, sea-gods and mermaids are instructing nymphs to ride on dolphins, a sphinx plays with a dragon, satyrs are placed in a vintage scene, sirens beguile centaurs with music--all in the fancy of the Revival, exuberant, yet full of dainty grace. Bits of marble work strike the eye here and there--the heraldic bearing of Rovere, the eagle of Alidori; but there is little left to tell us of the glory of the princely house, of the great churchman who built it, or of the Umbrian master he employed to decorate it. The exultant motto which he placed on a marble tablet to celebrate its completion, looks down from the decaying wall and speaks to us in words half sad, half mocking: "This house shall stand till the ant has drunk up the sea, and till the tortoise has crept round the world." This plan of small landscapes and scenes set in a wide framework of fantastic objects, classic and mythological, musical instruments, garlands and ribbons, becoming more and more grotesque, was peculiar at this time to Pintoricchio. He may have taken the idea from walls in old Roman houses, since destroyed, but of which many were uncovered at this period. The same sort of decoration is to be seen to-day in the Roman rooms on the Palatine. Pintoricchio uses this mode of decoration again in the Borgia Apartments, and from him Raphael borrowed the idea for his _loggie_. The beautiful church of Santa Maria del Popolo, restored by Pope Sixtus in 1472, and subsequently rendered a very storehouse of art by his successors and their cardinal kinsmen, would be, if it had been left with all its original decorations, one of the finest monuments to Pintoricchio's art in Italy. A great deal still remains, but much has been swept away. We cannot be quite certain of the exact date of each chapel, but his work here, with the exception of the choir, was carried out during the next few years.