It is much to be regretted, with a view to solving the question of Perugino's personality in relation to his art, that his character does not emerge with any salience from the meagre notices we have received concerning him, and that we know but little of his private life. Vasari tells us that he married a very beautiful girl, and that one of his chief pleasures was to see this wife handsomely dressed at home and abroad. He often decked her out in clothes and jewels with his own hand. For the rest, we find in Perugino, far more than in either Mantegna or Signorelli, an instance of the simple Italian craftsman, employing numerous assistants, undertaking contract work on a large scale, and striking keen bargains with his employers. Both at Florence and at Perugia he opened a _bottega_; and by the exercise of his trade as a master-painter, he realised enough money to buy substantial estates in those cities, as well as in his birthplace.[223] In all the greatest artworks of the age he took his part. Thus we find him painting in the Sistine Chapel between 1484 and 1486, treating with the commune of Orvieto for the completion of the chapel of S. Brizio in 1489, joining in the debate upon the façade of S. Maria del Fiore in 1491, giving his opinion upon the erection of Michael Angelo's "David" at Florence in 1504, and competing with Signorelli, Pinturicchio, and Bazzi for the decoration of the Stanze of the Vatican in 1508. The rising of brighter stars above the horizon during his lifetime somewhat dimmed his fame, and caused him much disquietude; yet neither Raphael nor Michael Angelo interfered with the demand for his pictures, which continued to be lively till the very year of his death. That he was jealous of these younger rivals, appears from the fact that he brought an action against Michael Angelo for having called his style stupid and antiquated. In the celebrated phrase cast at him by the blunt and scornful master of a new art-mystery[224], we discern the abrupt line of division between time-honoured tradition and the _maniera moderna_ of the full Renaissance. The old Titans had to yield their place before the new Olympian deities of Italian painting. There is something pathetic in the retirement of the grey-haired Perugino from Rome, to make way for the victorious Phoebean beauty of the boy Raphael.