Something of the beauty which greets us in these halls we owe to the mellowing hand of time; yet even when new, the effect must have been rich and glowing, brilliant and deep rather than gaudy, and all is planned to suit the subdued light of a northern aspect. The square, not very high rooms are spaced, divided, and slightly vaulted with the most consummate skill. The rich soft colours, the heavy gold, the airy outlook of landscape, the glowing background, give an effect, choice, jewelled, of an exquisite finish, of a sensuous gratification, almost without parallel. The imagination furnishes the empty chambers with all the choice objects they once contained. The priceless majolica, the gold and silver vessels, the brocaded hangings, the ivory carvings--what a background for the scenes of love and revelry once enacted here! The thrum of music, the laughter and wit and boisterous merriment, the muttered conferences, the whispered plotting, the ghastly treacheries, the dying groans. In one of these rooms, the Hall of Arts, the first husband of the young Lucrezia was murdered. In the adjoining room the Pope himself died in agonies. On these and on what other deeds of darkness and despair and triumphant villainy have these chaste and innocent conceptions of Pintoricchio looked down. It gives them a curious attraction, born of incongruity; as a writer says: "They have all the fascination of 'fleurs du mal.'" It was about this time that the grotesque first crept into art. Dr. Schmarsow thinks that the earliest signs may be detected in the Borgia Apartments. The early art of the Renaissance had shown a preference for the classic, inspired by the decorations on antique marbles. The objects were clear and simple, human beings, animals, keeping true to nature, ornamented with garlands, ribbons, and other accessories, fanciful, but not fantastic. The origin of the expression "grottesque," which is first used in Pintoricchio's contract in Siena in 1502, is explained by Benvenuto Cellini in 1571. It was taken from the objects found by students of art who explored antique monuments in caverns or grottoes. Paintings, ornamented with grotesques, were crowded with objects all complicated, twisted and adapted, masks, swans with abnormally long necks, fabulous monsters, unnatural flowers. Exuberantly as Pintoricchio afterwards uses such objects, the tendency is only seen slightly here and in the Buffalini chapel. His work in the first hall (the Hall of Mysteries) of the life of our Lord, has something of a mediæval tendency. The scenes are seven in number: "The Annunciation," "The Nativity," "The Adoration of the Magi," "The Resurrection," "The Ascension," "The Descent of the Holy Spirit," and "The Assumption of the Virgin." The composition of all is of the simplest, no strong emotions are rendered, and the figures are all of that peaceful and primitive devotion suited to the ruling of the early Church, and recalling Fiorenzo and Bonfigli.