The figures in these two rooms are much restored, and the whole style is inferior and has an antiquated and archaic effect, which has been commented upon by every writer from the time of Taja. At the same time, there are certain of the sibyls, that of Delphi, and she of Europa, where we recognise Pintoricchio's special supervision in the head-dresses, the gestures, and the peculiar tricks of drapery.
Crowe and Cavalcaselle have attributed some of this work to Peruzzi, who, however, was only a boy of thirteen at this time, but Vasari speaks of "a Volterrean named Pietro d'Andrea, who spent most of his time in Rome, where he was working at some things in the palace of Alexander Borgia." Messer Pietro d'Andrea of Volterra was the master of Peruzzi, and there is sufficient likeness to Peruzzi's style to give strong assurance that we have here the hand of his teacher. Schmarsow sees in part the hand of a Sienese, but whoever may have been concerned in the execution, the whole must have been sketched out by Pintoricchio, and is in harmony with the rest of the suite. In the window recesses of the "Hall of the Creed," the decorations show no falling off in originality. Dolphins, masks, satyrs, flying loves, candelabra, and garlands are used with astonishing resource and variety. On the ceiling of the "Hall of Sibyls" are emblematical groups of the planets, with gods and goddesses driving triumphal cars, which remind us of Perugino's rendering some years later on the ceiling of the Cambio.
Nowhere can Pintoricchio's special merits and failings be better studied than in this long and brilliant range of rooms. In detail it is easy to discern the many shortcomings. He has little feeling for line; he has never made a study of planes and masses; his personages stand about at haphazard, and often fail to belong to each other or to the events going on near them. There is hardly a subservient figure in any one of the scenes which would be missed if it were blotted out, or which is essential to the balance of line or colour. The distant objects are often as full in tone as the foreground; nowhere does the spirit of the composition rise into the sublime. On the other hand, the painter never forgets the purpose that has brought him here. With a self-restraint and a feeling for effect which are unerring, he hits upon the exact size, and keeps his compositions strictly within the picture and at the right distance from the eye. Raphael's splendid creations in the stanze suffer because of their vastness of conception and execution compared to the narrow and inadequate space from which we view them. We go back from them as far as we are able, feeling as if their position must be but a temporary one. We long to see them in a freer air. Their space seems to annihilate us, their thought is overwhelming and insistent.