Kugler, in Murray's Handbook of Painting in Italy, reflected for the general reader of the middle of the nineteenth century what was the conventional scholarly view of Perugino's reputation. Kugler points both to what he sees as the essential basis of Perugino 's style in the work of the Umbrian school, and also to the importance of his time working in Florence, with Verrocchio, and in Rome. He continues:
After Perugino had thus passed through the schools, he returned to his own first manner... It was at this time he acquired that grace and softness, that tender enthusiastic earnestness, which give so great a charm to his pictures; and if they sometimes leave much to be wished for in force and variety of character, the heads, especially the youthful and ardently expressive ones, are of surpassing beauty; in the colouring, again, both of flesh and drapery, in the warm, bright skies, and in the well-managed gradations of his landscapes, he had great and varied merit. ( Kugler, ed. Eastlake, Handbook of the History of Painting, Part One, The Italian Schools, First Edition, p. 157)
However, Kugler felt that some of Perugino 's later work is 'strikingly weak':
Soon after Perugino had established himself in Perugia, he gave himself up, like many painters of the time, to a mere mechanical dexterity, and worked principally for gain. He erected a large studio, in which several scholars were employed to execute commissions from his designs. In his later works therefore, of which there are many in the churches of Perugia, and in foreign galleries, the greatest uniformity of design prevails, with considerable inequality of execution, according as more or less talented scholars were employed. The last works executed by Perugino's own hand are strikingly weak: the Martyrdom of St, Sebastian, of the year 1518, in S. Franceso de' Conventuali, at Perugia, may be mentioned as an example. ( Kugler, ed. Eastlake, Handbook of the History of Painting, Part One, The Italian Schools, First Edition, p. 159.