began to notice the hardworking boy, and when
they looked at his work, with all its faults and want
of finish, they saw in it that divine something called
genius which no one can mistake.

Then the doors of another world seemed to open
to Pietro. All day long he could now work at his
beloved painting and learn fresh wonders as he
watched the great men use the brush and pencil.
In the studio of the painter Verocchio he met the
men of whose fame he had so often heard, and whose
work he looked upon with awe and reverence.

There was the good-tempered monk of the Carmine,
Fra Filipo Lippi, the young Botticelli, and a youth
just his own age whom they called Leonardo da
Vinci, of whom it was whispered already that he
would some day be the greatest master of the
age.

These were golden days for Perugino, as he was
called, for the name of the city where he had come
from was always now given to him. The pictures
he had longed to paint grew beneath his hand,
and upon his canvas began to dawn the solemn
dignity and open-air spaciousness of those evening
visions he had seen when he gazed across the
Umbrian Plain. There was no noise of battle, no
human passion in his pictures. His saints stood
quiet and solemn, single figures with just a thread