Sodoma’s influence at Siena, where he lived a picturesque life, delighting in his horses and surrounding himself with strange four-footed pets of all sorts, soon produced a school of worthy masters.  Girolamo del Pacchia, Domenico Beccafumi, and Baldassare Peruzzi, though they owed much to the stimulus of his example, followed him in no servile spirit.  Indeed, it may be said that Pacchia’s paintings in the Oratory of S. Bernardino, though they lacked his siren beauty, are more powerfully composed; while Peruzzi’s fresco of “Augustus and the Sibyl,” in the church of Fontegiusta, has a monumental dignity unknown to Sodoma.  Beccafumi is apt to leave the spectator of his paintings cold.  From inventive powers so rich and technical excellence so thorough, we demand more than he can give, and are therefore disappointed.  His most interesting picture at Siena is the “Stigmatisation of S. Catherine,” famous for its mastery of graduated whites.  Much of the paved work of the Duomo is attributed to his design.  Both Beccafumi and Peruzzi felt the cold and manneristic Roman style of rhetoric injuriously.

To mention the remaining schools of Italy in detail would be superfluous.  True art still flourished at Ferrara, where Garofalo endeavoured to carry on the Roman manner of Raphael without the necessary strength or ideality, but also without the soulless insincerity of the mannerists.  His best quality was colouring, gemlike and rich; but this found little scope for exercise in the dry and laboured style he affected.  Dosso Dossi fared better, perhaps through having never experienced the seductions of Rome.  His glowing colour and quaint fancy give the attraction of romance to many of his pictures.  The “Circe,” for example, of the Borghese Palace, is worthy to rank with the best Renaissance work.  It is perfectly original, not even suggesting the influence of Venice by its deep and lustrous hues.  No painting is more fit to illustrate the “Orlando Innamorato.”  Just so, we feel in looking at it, did Dragontina show herself to Boiardo’s fancy.  Ariosto’s Alcina belongs to a different family of magnificent witches.

Cremona, at this epoch, had a school of painters, influenced almost equally by the Venetians, the Milanese, and the Roman mannerists.  The Campi family covered those grave Lombard vaults with stucco, fresco, and gilding in a style only just removed from the barocco.[407] Brescia and Bergamo remained within the influence of Venice, producing work of nearly first-rate quality in Moretto, Romanino, and Lorenzo Lotto.  Moroni, the pupil of Moretto, was destined to become one of the most powerful character painters of the modern world, and to enrich the studies of historians and artists with a series of portraits impressive by their fidelity to the spirit of the sixteenth century at its conclusion.  Venice herself at this period was still producing masterpieces of the genuine Renaissance.  But the decline into mannerism, caused by circumstances similar to those of Rome, was not far distant.