It is curious to pass from Perugino's frescoes in the audience chamber of the Cambio to those of his pupil Giannicola Manni in the chapel of the same guild. Manni's work is very rare, and indeed it is barely seen outside Perugia.[91] He was a scholar of Perugino, and in his earlier years he followed in the steps of his master, but in later life he went to Florence and there acquired a love for the style of Andrea del Sarto. The influence of the two distinct schools of painting is strongly marked in the chapel of the Cambio, the ceiling of which was painted early in Manni's life, the walls after his return from Florence. Manni is a genial and attractive painter. He paints exactly as he pleases, regardless of religion or of history, and in his series of scenes from the life of S. John he gives us a set of luxurious human beings leading a very human cinque-cento life. The colour is bright, the figures portraits of the time. The ladies are very decolletées, fat, and dressed in comfortable gowns of the most beautiful stuffs and the simplest cut. One lady in the Nativity is particularly attractive. She wears a gorgeous gown of red; her fluffy yellow hair is neatly gathered in a net, embossed with bobs of the purest gold. S. Elizabeth, too, may be envied the splendour of her bed, and the looping of its heavy damask curtains. There is a sense of luxury, a sort of wanton abundance which is almost Venetian, throughout Manni's frescoes of the life of S. John. In the banquet scene, a dog and cat are preparing for a playful battle in the foreground of the picture. Had the Umbrian painter seen some canvasses of Veronese? Certainly he had wandered far afield from the early teaching which shows so clear upon the ceiling. He died in 1544, and most of his work, which we know to have consisted chiefly of banners, is lost to us, lost too, the painting of the city clock which Mariotti records for us with such minute precision.[92] * * * * * On leaving the Cambio it would be well to look in at the Magistrate's audience chamber which opens on to the Corso two doors further on. It is a magnificent piece of Renaissance woodwork where every inch is exquisitely carved and finished. Perugia is rich in rare and lovely carvings, but nowhere more than in this single hall. CHAPTER X _The Pinacoteca_[93] " ...Parmi de pareilles moeurs, les âmes se maintiennent vivantes, et le sol est tout labouré pour faire germer les arts. Mais quel contraste entre ces arts et ces moeurs!" H. TAINE, "Pérouse et Assise," _Voyage en Italie_.