The influence of Perugino upon Italian art was powerful though transitory. He formed a band of able pupils, among whom was the great Raphael; and though Raphael speedily abandoned his master's narrow footpath through the fields of painting, he owed to Perugino the invaluable benefit of training in solid technical methods and traditions of pure taste. From none of his elder contemporaries, with the exception of Fra Bartolommeo, could the young Raphael have learnt so much that was congenial to his early instincts. What, for example, might have befallen him if he had worked with Signorelli, it is difficult to imagine; for while nothing is more obvious on the one hand than Raphael's originality, his strong assimilative bias is scarcely less remarkable. The time has not yet come to speak of Raphael; nor will space suffice for detailed observations on his fellow-students in the workshop at Perugia. The place occupied by Perugino in the evolution of Italian painting is peculiar. In the middle of a positive and worldly age, declining fast to frigid scepticism and political corruption, he set the final touch of technical art upon the devotion transmitted from earlier and more enthusiastic centuries. The flower of Umbrian piety blossomed in the masterpieces of his youth, and faded into dryness in the affectations of his manhood. Nothing was left on the same line for his successors. Among these, Bernardo Pinturicchio can here alone be mentioned. A thorough naturalist, though saturated with the mannerism of the Umbrian school, Pinturicchio was not distracted either by scientific or ideal aims from the clear and fluent presentation of contemporary manners and costumes. He is a kind of Umbrian Gozzoli, who brings us here and there in close relation to the men of his own time, and has in consequence a special value for the student of Renaissance life. His wall-paintings in the library of the cathedral of Siena are so well preserved that we need not seek elsewhere for better specimens of the decorative art most highly prized in the first years of the sixteenth century[225]. These frescoes have a richness of effect and a vivacity of natural action, which, in spite of their superficiality, render them highly charming. The life of Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Pius II., is here treated like a legend. There is no attempt at representing the dress of half a century anterior to the painter's date, or at rendering accurate historic portraiture. Both Pope and Emperor are romantically conceived, and each portion of the tale is told as though it were a fit in some popular ballad. So much remains of Perugian affectation as gives a kind of childlike grace to the studied attitudes and many-coloured groups of elegant young men.