Away to the southwest of Perugia, above the lakes of Trasimene and Chiusi, with a wide view southwards towards Rome, and northwards to Cortona, is the little Umbrian hill-town of Città della Pieve. It is so deeply buried in its oak woods that one can barely see it from the hills and plains around it. The town is very old and very sleepy, built of red bricks with hardly any stones, and scarcely any buildings of importance. The streets seem fallen dead asleep. "Why do you come here? The place is dead. Nothing ever happens in our city," said the melancholy daughter of the landlord, and the girl, by her unconscious words, explained the very reason of our visit. Nothing ever happens in Città della Pieve. The town has fallen on sleep in its delightful landscape--on sleep as silent and profound as that of all the fossil shells in the banks along the roads which lead to it. But the place is strangely and marvellously beautiful; it holds the very essence of that intense religious charm peculiar to the landscapes of Umbria, and to the painters who have painted them; without exaggeration, we may say that the city looks to-day just exactly as it looked over four hundred years ago, at the time when, to the lovers of art, its history began and ended.[86] * * * * * Pietro Vannucci de Castro Plebis _detto il Perugino_, was born at Città della Pieve in the year 1446. His parents were very poor, but they were of a good family and position. There were many children, and life was a struggle for bread in the small boy's home. When he was about eight, his father, Christoforo Vannucci, decided to educate him as a painter, and so he brought him to the city of Perugia, and there, as Vasari says, "this child, who had been reared in penury and want, was given as a shop drudge to a painter who was not particularly distinguished in his calling, but who held the art in great veneration, and highly honoured the men who excelled therein." The painter was probably Bonfigli, one of the most delightful artists of the Umbrian school, but Pietro must have gathered instruction from other sources too, from Fiorenzo di Lorenzo and Piero della Francesca, who we know were painting at that time. Maybe the boy met them at their work in churches, maybe he even travelled with them as a sort of journeyman. But it was probably Bonfigli who early inspired him with an ambitious desire to spread his wings in higher spheres of art than the little Umbrian town afforded him, and who gave him the worldly-wise advice retailed to us at some length by Vasari: Perugino must go to Florence,