The repose of the hall in its entirety is very striking; hardly a figure is in anything like violent action, all move and stand with quiet dignity, all the movement takes place well within the picture, and the extraordinarily clever use made of the sky, ceiling, floor, and wide retreating background, give us breath and air, and a sense of delight and freedom. In as many as eight of these frescoes we have an enthroned figure, yet treated with what variety and absence of monotony. The first scene shows us a joyous youth setting out on a stormy journey; the last, an old man, pale and careworn, carried by loving friends, and behind him, an untroubled sea and the calm of sunset. The ceiling is a curious mixture of sacred subjects and mythological ones, after the manner of that in the Colonna Palace, but not very appropriate to the Pope's Chapel; sporting of fauns and nymphs, Cupid riding on a green dolphin, grotesques, recalling the choir of Santa Maria del Popolo, but richer in colour and more delicately harmonised. The dark oak, the blue and white-tiled floor, with the yellow crescent of the Piccolomini, and the pilasters repeating the blue and white, are all part of the design, in which there is one guiding hand. It is all well adapted to give brightness to the long room, so slightly arched, and lighted only from one end. The room is so beautiful that it is hard to say that it is mechanical--yet assuredly there is something stiff and academic about it, some loss of grace and the joyous sense of creation, a feeling that the painter was growing old and tired, and that the childlike enjoyment of beauty was less keen. In the first fresco, whether we owe it to the young Raphael's help or to the natural interest at starting, we recognise buoyancy and the love of experiment; and we have something of it again in the fairy-tale tableau, where the prince and the lady meet, but the colour has become gaudier and cheaper, the _naïveté_, the enchantment, the unconsciousness, have in some measure passed away, the tide of fancy is running lower, and it is now that we chiefly feel the lack of that well of science from which the artist can drink ever deeper as the years go by. CHAPTER X PANEL PAINTINGS It is difficult to arrange Pintoricchio's pictures into distinct groups. He wandered backwards and forwards between Rome and Umbria for so many years, and his art, during the whole time, though showing variations, never undergoes any radical change or development. He arrived early at a point which satisfied his employers, and there he remained. He did not attempt to try experiments, or to unravel new problems. He was almost always engrossed by great undertakings, and had little time to think of anything beyond getting them creditably executed in a given time.