The impressions of these days are perhaps immortalized
in the small, early pictures of St. Michael and St. George: something
of them, it may be, lives eternally in the large painting of St.
Michael: and if Astorre Baglione has anywhere found his apotheosis, it
is in the figure of the heavenly horseman in the Heliodorus.
The opponents of the Baglioni were partly destroyed, partly scattered
in terror, and were henceforth incapable of another enterprise of the
kind. After a time a partial reconciliation took place, and some of the
exiles were allowed to return. But Perugia became none the safer or
more tranquil: the inward discord of the ruling family broke out in
frightful excesses. An opposition was formed against Guido and Ridolfo
and their sons Gianpaolo, Simonetto, Astorre, Gismondo, Gentile,
Marcantonio and others, by two great-nephews, Grifone and Carlo
Barciglia; the latter of the two was also nephew of Varano Prince of
Camerino, and brother-in-law of one of the former exiles, Gerolamo
della Penna. In vain did Simonetto, warned by sinister presentiment,
entreat his uncle on his knees to allow him to put Penna to death:
Guido refused. The plot ripened suddenly on the occasion of the
marriage of Astorre with Lavinia Colonna, at Midsummer, 1500. The
festival began and lasted several days amid gloomy forebodings, whose
deepening effect is admirably described by Matarazzo.
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