Niccolò’s most illustrious contemporary in this school was Pietro
Perugino (1446-1523). Over fifty of the religious pictures of this
influential and accomplished master were carried off from Central Italy
by Napoleon. He is well represented in this Gallery. The contemplative
and deeply impressive pictures of his less mannered style are among
the best pictures which Umbria has given us, but there is a tendency,
notably towards the end of his career, to repeat his compositions,
only altering the attitude of a single figure, and so exhibiting a
marked lack of originality. His early _Holy Family with St. Rose and
St. Catherine_ (No. 1564), painted about 1491, is a little cramped;
the tondo hardly provides sufficient space to contain the rather stiff
figures, and the treatment is unpleasantly conventional. It also
recalls the art of Fiorenzo di Lorenzo. The _St. Sebastian_ (No. 1566A,
Plate VI.), which is inscribed: