From the Chiesa Nuova (built in 1218 but entirely remodelled and spoilt by bad decoration) a narrow street leads off to the left and down past some charming red brick palaces into a narrower street where what is known as Perugino's house still stands.
[Illustration: THE OLD COLLEGIO DEI NOTARI, SAID TO BE THE STUDIO OF PERUGINO]
Though there seems to be but very slight evidence about the real abode of the painter, his studio has been fixed in the beautiful old corner palace with the red marble windows in the Via del Commercio off the Corso. But one place does as well as another to pin a legend to,
and this little house of mean appearance tucked away in a dark and somewhat dingy street, with only a marble slab to mark it, serves the purpose well enough. Indeed, if one believed Vasari, one could with ease imagine Perugino choosing such a spot as this to hide his wife, his crimes (?) and all his money in, and see him hurrying thither in the dusk of a December evening from some big church or city where he had been to paint an altar-piece for prince or pontiff. One can even picture the long dark cloak he wore to cover up his money bag, his little cap pressed low upon his rather cloudy forehead, and one can almost hear him chuckle as he eats his maccaroni and strokes the fair hair of the woman he so loved, thinking with the joy of malice of all the other women who would come to pray and weep before his saints and his _Pietàs_.
But this is nothing better than a dream. Blankly one looks at the slab above the door, at the wall from which even the frescoe of S. Christopher has vanished, and from the utter silence of the place one hurries away and further on down the Via dei Priori. The street ends, and one passes into the open country through the Porta S. Susanna. Just above is the _Torre degli Scirri_--one of the only specimens remaining of all the wealth of towers in the past. A tree has grown upon its very top as though to seal the peace which follows after strife. A little further on is the small church of the Madonna della Luce. The front of this church is a very dainty bit of architecture and was designed by Cesarino Roscetto, a Perugian goldsmith, who also made the silver shrine in the cathedral which holds the Virgin's ring. It has inside a beautiful altar piece by some scholar of Perugino. The picture is exquisite in colour and in sentiment. Siepi gives a long history about it, which, although it does not altogether fit in with the facts of dates, we cannot refrain from mentioning here. (Perhaps he was alluding to some older fresco which has disappeared.) He says that on the 12th of September 1513 some youths were playing at cards under the