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Afterwards he painted in fresco the whole of the Audience Chamber of the Cambio, adorning the compartments of the vaulting with the seven planets, drawn in certain cars by diverse animals, according to the old usage; on the wall opposite to the door of entrance he painted the Nativity and Resurrection of Christ, with a panel containing S. John the Baptist in the midst of certain other saints.
There again a young man accosted us, offering to guide us to the Cambio or Exchange; and as this was one of the places which we especially wished to see, we accepted his services.
But en cambio the soft dirt road climbed and wound and descended all but incessantly, gradually working its way higher, until we could look out now and then over hundreds of square miles of hot country with barely a break in all its expanse of dense, steaming vegetation.
But Botticelli's painted statue and Perugino's "S. Michael" and "Warriors" of the Cambio seem to spread their legs because they are too puny to bear the weight of the body in any other manner, while with Signorelli, the attitude became the keynote of his resolute indomitable nature, and so much a part of his work, that one is apt to forget it did not originate with him.
But I ought n't to talk of mouldy alleys, or yet of azure distances, as if they formed the main appeal to taste in this accomplished little city. In the Sala del Cambio, where in ancient days the money-changers rattled their embossed coin and figured up their profits, you may enjoy one of the serenest aesthetic pleasures that the golden age of art anywhere offers us.
These early painters have made up their Paganism for themselves, out of all pleasant things they knew; their fancy has brooded upon it; and the very details that make us laugh, the details coming direct from the Middle Ages, the spirit in glaring opposition occasionally to that of Antiquity, bring home to us how completely this Pagan fairyland is a genuine reality to these men. We feel this in nearly all the work of that sort least, in the archæological Mantegna's. We see it beginning in the mere single figures the various drawings of Orpheus, "Orpheus le doux menestrier jouant de flutes et de musettes," as Villon called him, much about that time piping or fiddling among little toy animals out of a Nuremberg box; the drawing of fauns carrying sheep, some with a queer look of the Good Shepherd about them, of Pinturicchio; and rising to such wonderful exhibitions (to me, with their obscure reminiscence of pageants, they always seem like ballets) as Perugino's Ceiling of the Cambio, where, among arabesqued constellations, the gods of antiquity move gravely along: the bearded knight Mars, armed cap-
"Change, cambio!" said the official testily. Would tourists never learn anything? Merrihew got it through his head somehow where the difficulty lay. He went out again, remembering the sign Cambio hanging in front of the news-stand. He lost half a dollar in the exchange, but for the time being his troubles were over. Meanwhile Hillard had made inquiries at the door.
No tengo sino el más profundo respeto para todos aquéllos, hombres y mujeres, que piensan honradamente así. No tienen la culpa de creer que aquello que ha existido siempre de un modo tal, no sea lo mejor. No comprenden que la vida es movimiento e insensiblemente se adhieren a las capas sociales nuevos elementos de vida y carácter que requieren necesariamente el cambio y la renovación.
The Sala del Cambio at Perugia may also be cited as rich in tarsia-work designed by Perugino, while the church of S. Pietro de' Cassinensi outside the city is a museum of masterpieces executed by Fra Damiano da Bergamo and Stefano da Bergamo from designs of Raphael. Not less beautiful are the inlaid wood panels in the Palace of Urbino, by Maestro Giacomo of Florence.
The door of the Cambio proved to be one that we had passed several times, while seeking for it, and was very near the church just mentioned, which fronts on one side of the same piazza.
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