The "Annunciation" has the same advantage over the otherwise not dissimilar one in the Borgia Hall of Mysteries. The angel is almost identical; the Virgin, standing at her reading-desk and shrinking backwards, has all the naïve charm of the school of Fiorenzo. The great Renaissance hall stretches far behind, and beyond the perspective of stately columns we see a gay little view set in the archway: a scene at the city gates, wayfarers arriving at the inn outside the walls, a table with a white cloth spread, a dog jumping up,--Pintoricchio's favourite greyhound,--horsemen riding on through the gateway, a well, and a woman coming to draw water. The grotesques upon the pilasters are carefully drawn, but roughly painted, and the shadows hatched in. It is in this fresco, under the little _prie-dieu_ at the side, that Pintoricchio has drawn his own portrait, which almost startles us as we catch the life-like blink of its eyes, as it looks out from among the conventionalised saints. A coral rosary and the painter's brushes are painted below, and the label, BERNARDINO PICTORICUS PERUSINUS. Perugino, a few miles off, was working at the Hall of Exchange, and one of the artists evidently took the idea from the other of painting the head in this way instead of introducing himself after the more usual fashion as a spectator. A short distance from the town lies the little church of San Girolamo, where one is shown as Pintoricchio's a "Sposalizio" and a "Nativity." The first cannot be his. It is a very poor little fresco, without any indications even of his influence, and more probably by some obscure follower of Perugino or Lo Spagna. The arrangement of heads of the group of maidens standing behind Mary has either been taken from, or suggested by, that in Raphael's "Sposalizio." In the "Presepio," which is on the wall of the cloister chapel (which has since been used as an outhouse), ruined as it is, we are better able to trace the master's hand. The Madonna's head is adorned with a twisted veil, and a light scarf is drawn across the breast and arranged in the same way as in the fresco over the door of the Borgia room (No. III.). The heads are all drawn with delicacy and decision, and even now we can trace original, sharp, precise touches. The man behind with the lamb on his shoulders is in Pintoricchio's simpler and earlier manner--a good sketch straight from the model. The angels on the clouds kneel stiffly, and the whole gives the impression of a very early work, which has been copied in some details for the later "Adoration of the Shepherds" in the Baglioni Chapel. The landscape, though much destroyed, still retains his characteristics. [Illustration: _Alinari photo_] [_Sta. Maria Maggiore, Spello_ THE ANNUNCIATION: WITH PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST]