written by the Cardinal di Bibiena—­“one of the first comedies seen or recited in the vulgar tongue”—­was performed before Pope Leo, the aid of Baldassare was sought again, to prepare the scenic adornments of the representation.  His labours were successful beyond measure; two of his scenes, painted upon this or upon some other occasion, Vasari pronounced to be “surprisingly beautiful, opening the way to those of a similar kind which have been made in our own day.”  The artist was a fine colourist, well skilled in perspective, and in the management of light, insomuch that his drawings did not look “like things feigned, but rather as the living reality.”  Vasari relates that he conducted Titian to see certain works of Peruzzi, of which the illusion was most complete.  The greater artist “could by no means be persuaded that they were simply painted, and remained in astonishment, when, on changing his point of view, he perceived that they were so.”  Dying in 1536, Baldassare was buried in the Rotondo, near the tomb of Raffaelo da Urbino, all the painters, sculptors, and architects of Rome attending the interment.  That he was an artist of the first rank was agreed on all hands.  And he is further entitled to be remembered as one of the very earliest of great scene-painters.

In England, some six-and-thirty years later, there was born an artist and architect of even greater fame than Peruzzi:  Inigo Jones, who, like Peruzzi, rendered important aid to the adornment of the stage.  In his youth Inigo had studied landscape-painting in Italy.  At Rome he became an architect; as Walpole expresses it, “he dropped the pencil and conceived Whitehall.”

Meanwhile a taste, even a sort of passion, had arisen at the English court for masques and pageants of extraordinary magnificence.  Poetry, painting, music, and architecture were combined in their production.  Ben Jonson was the laureate; Inigo Jones the inventor and designer of the scenic decorations; Laniere, Lawes, and Ferabosco contributed the musical embellishments; the king, the queen, and the young nobility danced in the interludes.  On these entertainments L3000 to L5000 were often expended, and on more public occasions L10,000 and even L20,000.  “It seems,” says Isaac Disraeli, “that as no masque writer equalled Jonson, so no ‘machinist’ rivalled Inigo Jones.”  For the great architect was wont to busy himself in devising mechanical changes of scenery, such as distinguishes modern pantomime.  Jonson, describing his “Masque of Blackness,” performed before the court at Whitehall, on Twelfth Night, 1605, says:  “For the scene was drawn a landscape, consisting of small woods, and here and there a void place, filled with hangings; which falling, an artificial sea was seen to shoot forth, as if it flowed to the land, raised with waves, which seemed to move, and in some places the billows to break, as imitating that orderly disorder which is common in nature.”  Then follows a long account