Pietro formed many masters in his own manner, among these was one who proved to be indeed most excellent, one who devoted himself wholly to the honourable studies of his art, and very greatly surpassed his master; this was no other than the wondrous Raffaello Sanzio of Urbino, who together with his father, Giovanni de’ Santi, worked many years with Pietro Perugino.
The painter Benedetto Pinturicchio, of Perugia, was also a disciple of Pietro, whose manner he always retained, as we have related in his life. Rocco Zoppo,[1] a Florentine painter, was likewise the disciple of this master. Filippo Salviati has a very beautiful Madonna, in a round picture, by his hand, but it is true that this was entirely finished by Pietro himself. Rocco painted numerous pictures of the Madonna, and took many portraits, of which there is no need to speak further; but I will not omit to r<^late that this artist executed the portrait of Girolamo Riario, in the Sistine chapel in Rome, with that of F. Pietro, cardinal of San Sisto. Another disciple of Pietro was Montevarchi,[2] who painted many pictures in San Giovanni, in Valdarno, more particularly for the church of the Madonna, where he exe-
- ↑ “Not to be confounded,” remarks the Italian editor, “with the painter Marco Zoppo of Bologna,” mentioned in the life of Mantegna.
- ↑ Lanzi observes that this painter is not sufficiently known beyond his native place of Montevarchi, from which he takes his name.
was he honourably buried. Having expired without receiving the sacraments of the church, he was buried in unconsecrated ground, under an oak which stood by the way-side, but is said to have been afterwards disinterred and buried near the church, perhaps in the cemetery. This circumstance has been cited in proof of Pietro’s irreligion, who, as it is said, for not having chosen to receive the sacraments, was refused Christian burial;” but there was a plague raging at the time in Perugia and the neighbourhood, insomuch that the priests could no longer bestow the due rites on the dying or dead. Pietro may have fallen a victim to this malady, and the reports of his dying “unhouseled unannealed ” may have had their origin in this circumstance. Mariotti, Lettere, p. 1, discovered an instrument wherein the monks of St. Augustin agree with the sons of Pietro, to transport the body of their father to Perugia, and there give it honourable interment by way of liquidating a debt, which they acknowledge themselves to have contracted, for works executed by him in their church. It is true, that the calamities of the times prevented this contract from being fulfilled, but that such an agreement was entered into suffices to show that there was no ground of objection to the interment of Pietro’s remains in consecrated ground.
