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But on whatever spot it was fought, it is certain that the Roman power prevailed; and, in consequence thereof, ambassadors from Perusia, Cortona, and Arretium, which were then among the principal states of Etruria, soliciting a peace and alliance with the Romans, obtained a truce for thirty years.
But Baccio, having already drawn all the money, entered into negotiations with Messer Giovan Battista da Ricasoli, Bishop of Cortona, who was in Rome on business of Duke Cosimo's, to depart from Rome and go to Florence in order to serve Cosimo in the matter of the fountains of his villa of Castello and the tomb of his father, Signor Giovanni.
Unlike the Samnites who had now for eighteen years maintained the unequal struggle, three of the most powerful Etruscan towns Perusia, Cortona, and Arretium consented after the first defeat to a separate peace for three hundred months , and after the Romans had once more beaten the other Etruscans near Perusia in the following year, the Tarquinienses also agreed to a peace of four hundred months ; whereupon the other cities desisted from the contest, and a temporary cessation of arms took place throughout Etruria.
It was at the time when three different popes claimed the authority over the Church of Rome, and the city of Florence declared itself in favor of Alexander V.; but the monks of Fiesole adhered to Gregory XII., and for this reason were driven from their convent. Six years they dwelt at Foligno; then the plague broke out in the country about them, and again they fled to Cortona.
Brother Guy, who was beatified by the Holy See, and of whom we have before spoken, begged the saint to allow him to build a cell in the fissure of a rock which was opposite to the convent of Celles, near Cortona, in order that he might live there in great solitude, and give himself up to contemplation.
The said panel set in place, he returned to Cortona, accompanied for a great part of the way by many citizens, friends, and relatives, as was due to the excellence of Luca, who always lived rather as a noble and a man of rank than as a painter.
The first dated picture remaining is the altar-piece of the Perugia Cathedral, painted in 1484, of which Vasari writes: "Also in Perugia he painted many works; and among others in the Cathedral, for Messer Jacopo Vannucci of Cortona, Bishop of the city, a picture in which is Our Lady, Sant Onofrio, Sant Ercolano, S. John Baptist, S. Stephen, and an angel, most beautiful, who tunes a lute."
During this period also, the Florentines made war with Ladislaus, king of Naples, who finding himself in great danger ceded to them the city of Cortona of which he was master; but soon afterward, recovering his power, he renewed the war, which became far more disastrous to the Florentines than before; and had it not, in 1414, been terminated by his death, as that of Lombardy had been by the death of the duke of Milan, he, like the duke, would have brought Florence into great danger of losing her liberty.
We have seen that during the four years and a half in which Signorelli was engaged on the great work of the Orvieto frescoes, he yet spent some part of the time in his native city, and there, in 1502, he painted the signed and dated "Deposition" with its predelle for the church of Santa Margherita, now removed to the Cathedral. Vasari thus speaks of it: "In Santa Margherita of Cortona, his native town, belonging to the Frati del Zoccolo, he painted a dead Christ; one of his most excellent works." This dead Christ is the figure which by its realism and pathos gave rise to the legend, already quoted, that it was painted from the body of his own son. It is an exact counterpart of the "Piet
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