The natural features of Umbrian scenery, its high-skied plains, its wide valleys, account in a measure for the pre-eminent feeling for space shown by its artists, and for their power to give air and atmosphere to those lofty structures in which they love to place their personages. These little panels, painted at Fiorenzo's finest period, are sharp and strong, yet fine as miniatures. The figures stand well on the stage. The point of sight is very low, at scarce a third of the whole, so that we have an undue proportion of airy surrounding, though all is on such a small scale. The perspective drawing shows how well-fitted Fiorenzo was to ground his pupil accurately in this, however insufficient his study of anatomy may have been. The drawing of the architecture is fine and true throughout, but in the figures, even if we allow for variations in Fiorenzo himself, we can hardly avoid seeing two different hands. They have all the charm of his manner, a manner essentially Umbrian, while we see a very distinct spirit, a spirit which was shared by Bonfigli, and by such a lesser master as Boccatis da Camerino, a naïve and cheerful tone, a direct simplicity, which is as far removed from the melancholy which broods in the eyes of the rapt saints of Siena, as it is from the scientific temper that ruled within sound of the Arno. Many of the figures are childish in their desire to express emotion, and are almost grotesque in detail, the hair is in a mop, exaggerated till it looks like a huge bird's nest, the hands are cramped and claw-like, but here and there we meet with graceful, well-proportioned beings, keeping their slender grace, without the angular and unpleasing length of limb which marks their companions. In the panel where San Bernardino raises a youth from the dead, a child playing with a dog recalls Pintoricchio's _putti_ on the pilasters at Siena. The young man on the right in the same scene, is supple and gracefully draped; a contrast to the wooden movements and stiff draperies of his fellow-pages. Even better is the youth reasoning, in a repetition of the same miracle, with his hand upon his hip and a dark cap perched upon his rippled curls.
[Illustration: _Alinari photo_] [_Picture Gallery, Perugia_