INTRODUCTORY The word Caricature does not lend itself easily to precise definition. Etymologically it connects itself with the Italian caricare, to load or charge, thus corresponding precisely in derivation with its French equivalent Charge; and—save a yet earlier reference in Sir Thomas Browne—it first appears, as far as I am aware, in that phrase of No. 537 of the Spectator, "Those burlesque pictures which the Italians call... more...

n considering the work of one of the greatest of the masters of the Renaissance, we have to go further back than the disputed question as to who was the first teacher of Pietro di Cristofano Vannucci—surnamed by his contemporaries "il Perugino," the Perugian—and to inquire into the more interesting story of his predecessors in that wonderful School of Umbria, on which his art puts, in a certain sense, the seal and completion. In an... more...