In fresco IX. the Pope is seated on the "high and well-appointed balcony," which he had ordered should be erected in St. Peter's, whence, after a discourse on her virtues, he might proceed to her solemn canonisation. The Cardinals are gathered round, the corpse of the saint lies at his feet, clad in the black and white of the Dominican order, her book upon her breast, and the lilies, which are her attribute, in her folded hands. Below stand a crowd of spectators bearing candles. In front is a long row of persons, said to be portraits. The first on the left we should guess to be Raphael, even without the traditional confirmation. Next him is Pintoricchio himself. The others have been variously named Andrea del Sarto, Fra Bartolommeo, etc. Steinmann suggests, with more probability, that one is intended for Eusebio di San Giorgio and another for Bembo Romano, who were both working as assistants, especially as the initials of the last are to be discerned on several of the pilasters among the decorations. The composition in this scene is rather disjointed. The two halves do not seem to belong to each other, and it is curious to note the difference between the conventional arrangement of the groups in the background and the characteristic forms and much more structural figures which the painter has evidently drawn from the life. The effigy of St. Catherine is taken from her monument in Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. The Dominicans and Augustinians are prominent, as it was of their order that the saint was so great an ornament. Pope Pius was one of the few Italians of that day in whom a great love for nature declared itself. Campana tells us of his visits to beautiful places, of his landscape gardening and planting, of his fondness for distant views, and for taking his food under the trees on some hill-side. It pleased him to chat with the peasants, to joke with his friends with "free and festive converse passing into moderate jest." He loved to build and adorn in his native city, and for a time he seemed to be only a man of cultivated and artistic life and busy pleasures. But he had not forgotten his crusading enthusiasm, and as the news travelled to Rome of the repeated victories of the Turks, of the loss of Morea, Rhodes, Cyprus, and of the Moslem advance on every side, he laid before his Cardinals his resolve to take up a holy war, counting upon the Christian princes of Europe rallying to his support. He mediated between the different quarrelsome Powers, and signed a league by which he was to meet the Venetians and an army of the Duke of Burgundy at Ancona; but the powers were half-hearted, only a small part of the promised forces arrived, and Ancona seems to have been a scene of rioting and mismanagement. [Illustration: _Alinari photo_] [_Library, Siena_ ÆNEAS PICCOLOMINI ELECTED POPE UNDER THE NAME OF PIUS II.]