Perugino 's work is later said by Ruskin to be 'noble, gracious, and quiet'( Ariadne Fiorentina (1872), Works, 22.346). It is set against the popular appeal of the dramatic gestures of the sixteenth century. Perugino is associated here with three other painters - Giotto, Orcagna and Fra Angelico - who represent the medieval tradition (see Ruskin on Perugino)
The first and second editions of Modern Painters I cited Giotto, Cimabue, and Fra Bartolommeo as the painters to stand with Perugino. There is evidence of Ruskin 's developing enthusiasm during his 1845 visit to Italy for paintings by Fra Angelico, as well as for work he considered to be by Orcagna. In a letter to John James Ruskin of 4 June 1845 he expresses his enthusiasm for the Giotto crucifix, the Strozzi chapel frescoes, attributed to Orcagna, though now agreed to be by Nardo di Cione, Orcagna's brother, and, above all, the reliquaries by Fra Angelico in the church of Santa Maria Novella. Beside these reliquaries Ruskin asserts that 'Perugino is prosaic' ( Shapiro, Ruskin in Italy: Letters to his parents 1845, p. 96).
The point about popular taste is reinforced by Dickens, in Pictures from Italy (1846) where he writes of his visit to the Vatican, and the 'indiscriminate and determined raptures in which some critics indulge' in response to the works of Michelangelo and Raphael; they describe both good and bad as 'works of extraordinary genius'.