In the year that his first son was born, Pintoricchio matriculated at the College of Painters at Perugia. He is there described as _Bernardinus Becti, detto il Pinturicchio_, whose habitation was at the Porta San Angelo.[12] In December of the same year, the magistrates of Siena approve of the Commune of Montemassi making him a donation of twenty "_moggie_" of land.[13] Fortified, doubtless, by his success in combating Perugian taxes, he immediately applies to the Council of Siena to free the grant for thirty years from taxes of "_dazzi_ and _gabelli_." This was conceded, with the exception of the gate tax. The petition runs:
[13] _Archives of Siena._ Vermiglioli, App. xx. and xxi.
"Bernardino Pintoricchio, who now addresses the most respected officials (of the Balia), is the servant of your Lordships, and not the least among renowned painters; for whom, as Cicero has written, the Romans in early times held but little. Yet after the increase of the empire, and in consequence of Eastern victories and the conquest of the Greek cities, they called the best from all parts of the world, not hesitating to seize all the finest pictures and sculptures which they could discover. They admitted painting to be supreme, similar to the liberal arts, and a rival to poesy. And artists being usually esteemed by those who govern republics, the said Bernardino has elected Sienna to be his home, hoping to live and reside there; (therefore) confiding in the clemency of your Lordships, and considering the adverse nature of the times, the smallness and diminution of profits, and the weight of his family; having heard also that craftsmen taking up their abode here receive grants of immunities, he prays exemption for thirty years from all taxes whatever, whether present or to come."[14]
[14] _Doc. Sen._ iii. 33-4. Trans. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. iii. p. 285.
In the spring of 1508 he was back across Italy to little Spello, where, in the transept of Sant' Andrea, he left an altar-painting, a Madonna and Saints, which does not add materially to his reputation. On a little stool in the foreground of the picture is painted a letter of Cardinal Baglioni, dated April 8th, 1508, written from his castle of Rocca di Zocco, full of affectionate assurances, and asking the painter to return to Siena. Its inclusion has been imputed to Pintoricchio's vanity; but a man who had been friends with Popes, and who had long been courted on all sides, was hardly likely to be uplifted by the friendship of a simple Cardinal-bishop. It is more likely that he was bitten with a rather inartistic fancy for painting objects lying about, to deceive the eye, and hit upon this as an appropriate one.