Then, in the ninth, he gratifies alike his national pride for the glory of Siena and his own heart by the canonisation of St Catherine, whose crusading zeal had anticipated his own. There is an interesting group of portraits below on our left, the two most conspicuous figures being Raphael and Pinturicchio himself, holding lighted tapers, while the two beyond Pinturicchio, with their backs turned to us, are probably his assistants, Eusebio di San Giorgio and Bembo Romano. Last of all, in the tenth fresco, Pius is at Ancona, come to head the crusade. He was dying, kept alive only by his indomitable enthusiasm, when he reached the city in July 1464, only to find that there were none to support him. In August the fleet of Venice appeared upon the scene. The Pope was then on his death-bed; but the painter, departing from historical fact, has represented him carried down to the harbour to meet the Doge, Cristofero Moro, who is shown kneeling [Illustration: _The Canonisation of St. Catherine._ _from Pinturicchio's Fresco._] before him, but who in reality never landed until the Pope had passed away. So faded a heroic dream. "It has pleased God," wrote the Senator of Rome, Guido di Carlo Piccolomini, to the Signoria of Siena, on August 15th, "this night, at the third hour, to call to Himself the blessed soul of the happy memory of Pope Pius. It is a little consolation to us in so great a loss that, being mortal like other men, he has died the most glorious Pontiff that for a very long time has sat in that seat."[95]