The manner of Pietro is somewhat hard and dry, like that of other painters of his time; and he occasionally exhibits a poverty in the drapery of his figures; his garments and mantles being curtailed and confined. But he atones for these faults by the grace of his heads, particularly in his boys and in his women; which have an air of elegance and a charm of colour unknown to his contemporaries. It is delightful to behold in his pictures, and in his frescos which remain in Perugia and Rome, the bright azure ground which affords such high relief to his figures; the green, purple, and violet tints so chastely harmonized, the beautiful and well drawn landscape and edifices, which, as Vasari says, was a thing until that time never seen in Florence. In his altarpieces he is not sufficiently varied. There is a remarkable painting executed for the church of S. Simone, at Perugia, of a Holy Family, one of the first specimens of a well designed and well composed altarpiece. In other respects Pietro did not make any great advances in invention; his Crucifixions and his Descents from the Cross are numerous, and of an uniform character. He has thus represented, with little variation, the Ascensions of our Lord and of the Virgin, in Bologna, in Florence, Perugia, and Città di S. Sepolcro. He was reproached with this circumstance in his lifetime, and defended himself by saying that no one had a right to complain, as the designs were all his own. There is also another defence, which is, that compositions, really beautiful, are still seen with delight when repeated in different places; whoever sees in the Sistine his S. Peter invested with the keys, will not be displeased at finding at Perugia the same landscape, in a picture of the Marriage of the Virgin. On the contrary, this picture is one of the finest objects that noble city affords; and may be considered as containing an epitome of the various styles of Pietro. In the opinion of some persons, his frescos exhibit a more fertile invention, and greater delicacy and harmony of colour. Of these, his masterpiece is in his native city, in the Sala del Cambio. It is an evangelical subject, with saints from the Old Testament, and with his own portrait, to which his grateful fellow citizens attached an elegant eulogy. He is most eminent, and adopts a sort of Raffaellesque style, in some of his latter pictures. I have observed it in a Holy Family, in the Carmine in Perugia. The same may be said too of certain small pictures, almost of a miniature class; as in the grado of S. Peter, in Perugia, than which nothing can be more finished and beautiful; and in many other pieces in which he has spared no pains,[21] but which are few in comparison to the multitude by his scholars, attributed to him.