Read Ebook: Pintoricchio by Phillipps Evelyn March Williamson George C Editor

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 436 lines and 54792 words, and 9 pages

That he was a lovable man is, I think, evident. We hear of no quarrels with his fellow-artists; Perugino secured him some of the best positions in the Sixtine, Signorelli was his child's sponsor. He had clearly the art of managing his assistants, who everywhere worked intelligently under him. With Fiorenzo his artistic relations must have been of the closest. Pope Alexander valued him, and Caesar's mention is an affectionate one, while the letter of Cardinal Baglioni is full of friendliness. Besides this, few things are more interesting in the history of artists' friendships than the close confidence and affection which all study of the frescoes at Siena convinces us existed between him and the young Raphael. Sigismondo Tizio, in his MS., gives his opinion that Bernardino surpassed Perugino as a painter, but that he had less sense and prudence than Vannucci, and was given to empty chatter.

A small number of Pintoricchio's works cannot be dated, and we must be satisfied with mentioning them, and considering the times at which they might have been produced.

His name is written variously in the documents of the time. In the grants of land signed by Cardinal Camerlengo, it is Pentoricchio, and Pentorichio on the fresco of Geometry in the Borgia rooms. Cardinal Baglioni writes it Pintorichio. In Grania's petition it appears as Pinturicchio. He himself signs his last picture, the "Cross-bearing Christ" in the Palazzo Borromeo, Pintoricchio, and to this form I have adhered. In the documents he is usually styled Messer Bernardino.

DERIVATION AND CHARACTER OF HIS ART

Umbria is a land of late development in the history of Italian painting, and of a sharp division in the character of its art. No town of the importance of Siena, second only to Florence, held sway in that part of Italy, nor do we find any name in its early history which we can place side by side with Giotto, Orcagna, or Duccio di Buoninsegna. It is difficult to account for this: the Umbrian plains were indeed ravaged again and again with blood and carnage, were seized upon, now by this party, and now by that; but all acquaintance with the art of the Renaissance bears in upon us that art as a rule only flourished more strongly when fed by war and ruin. One tyrant after another, as he rested from his conquests, became the patron of the painters. Pictures were painted to immortalise great victories, the altar-piece upon which the fame of Duccio chiefly hangs, was ordered by the Consiglio of Siena as a thank-offering to the Virgin after the battle of Monte Aperto.

The accounts of the cathedral at Orvieto give us names of artists who devoted themselves to its decoration towards the end of the fourteenth century--others were working in Perugia, painting effigies of traitors, hanging head downwards on the walls of the Palazzo Pubblico, but we have no reason to rank them higher than those who have left traces of their work in the little votive chapels that lie in the hills and out-of-the-way corners of Umbria. Some of these, going back to 1393, are not without a character of their own, guiltless indeed, of technique, but na?ve, vivid, and full of energy; yet they show little of that gradual growth which marks the Florentine school, nor do we find in them any trace of the fine, precise touch, which the early Sienese painters drew from the school of Byzantium. According to Mariotti, the art of miniature painting and illumination was carried on with great enthusiasm in Perugia, in the fourteenth century. Dante speaks of Oderisio of Gubbio:

"--Non se' tu Oderisi, L'Onor d'Agobbio, e l'onor di quell' arte, Ch' alluminare ? chiamata in Parisi?"

Then, when the fifteenth century was unfolding, two streams of art sweep across the province, distinct, yet mighty, mingling like the waters of the Rhine and Rhone. The many scattered towns of Umbria led to a far greater variety of type, individuality was more frequently maintained, influences spread more fitfully and partially than in those parts of Italy where all studied together, and practice and theory flew like wildfire from one to the other, emulations flourished, traditions were quickly formed and earnestly followed.

Gentile da Fabriano stands forth among the dearth of talent in Umbria at the dawn of the century, as the one master who was great enough to add realism to glowing colour and vivacity of fancy, and who, taking the old missal-painting character as a groundwork, could transplant all the pride of pageantry of the Middle Ages on to his panels, and give us in the gold brocades and velvet robes, in fairy princes and beautiful ladies, tropic birds and strange beasts, such a scene of joyous gallantry that, as in the "Adoration of the Magi," we can hear the tinkle of bells and the clang of gilded trappings, as the long procession winds down the gay hillside.

After a space, while a dainty colourist like Ottaviano Nelli painted enlarged miniatures and vapid angel faces, there arose a few miles off, at Arezzo, one of the strongest of masters; Piero della Francesca set a star of grand simplicity as a constraining guide, calm and broad, before those men who had the gift of the open eye. The character of that art was as exacting as it was scientific. It was as much geometrical and mathematical as artistic, and was occupied more with problems than with religious feeling. Its power was felt over a wide area, and moved even those who were least naturally alive to it. There seemed a likelihood that Umbrian art would, on the one hand, become absorbed in the Florentine character, hardly distinguishable from it, and, on the other, degenerate into puerile prattle; but there had wandered to Montefalco, one from Florence, who, to the enlightenment and the conscious effort drawn from those who clustered round Donatello and Masaccio, added a temper which appealed directly to the native feeling of Umbria. Benozzo Gozzoli was not a great painter, but his talent for narrative painting set a new model before those whose aptitude in that direction responded to the impulse. A school arose which combined in curious harmony the love of decorative detail of the miniature pictures, the space effects of Piero's large and airy settings, and the story-telling proclivities of the na?ve and garrulous Florentine.

Though Pintoricchio's early years are obscure, little doubt can exist as to his artistic derivation from Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, who combined the characteristics of the newly developed school in a pre-eminent degree. Rumohr ascribes Pintoricchio's style primarily to the school of Niccol? da Foligno. This attribution is founded partly on the "Altar-piece of Santa Maria dei Fossi," the arrangement of which is similar to some of Niccol?'s great anconas, the Madonna and Child enthroned in the centre, saints in panels on either side, a Piet? above, which divides an Annunciation into two parts. The types in this last scene certainly resemble Niccol?'s, and were constantly repeated by Bernardino; but the angels in the Piet? are from Fiorenzo, and the whole spirit is opposed to that of the intense and austere Folignate. It was painted, too, so long after Bernardino's art was fully formed that it can hardly serve to illustrate any early influence. No doubt, when he visited Foligno at this time, he took many ideas from what Niccol? had left there. Something too he owed to Benedetto Bonfigli; the cheerful na?vet?, the quaint adornments of dress and garland which attract us in Bonfigli, are traits which we find in Pintoricchio. The little oval, pointed face, with its arched brows, and small, close shut mouth, the type to which Bonfigli is constant, is that to which Pintoricchio adheres for his Madonna and angels; but this type is to be found too in Fiorenzo's earlier work, as in his "Adoration of the Child" in the Gallery in Perugia. If we compare this picture with Pintoricchio's "Nativity" in San Girolamo's Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome, we see at a glance the resemblance that underlies a few superficial variations. The whole construction of the two groups is similar. The Madonna's bent head, elbows squared, joined palms and finger-tips, the Child, lying partly on His Mother's robe, the position of the grey-bearded St. Joseph and the shepherds--everywhere Pintoricchio has been guided by the earlier master, though instead of the donor and two young men, who may have been his sons, and who kneel with their great hound behind them, he has substituted St. Jerome and his lion, and shepherds of a more acceptedly religious type, while the group of singing angels overhead is transferred from Fiorenzo's panel to that other Nativity at Spello.

Over the door of the Sala del Censo in the Palazzo Pubblico at Perugia, is a lunette of a Madonna and Child by Fiorenzo, which might well be Pintoricchio's own. It has his full touch and copious brush. We find the Mother again in the exquisite little fresco over the door of the Hall of Arts and Sciences in the Borgia Apartments, transplanted almost without alteration of line or expression; while the two angels on either side are those which he uses to support the dead Christ in the Piet? at the top of the polyptych painted for Santa Maria dei Fossi.

We have no trace of Pintoricchio himself ever having visited Florence, but the water flowed to him none the less from the fountainhead, and he assimilated it in his own manner. Fiorenzo, we feel sure, must have been there, and that in those years when Verrocchio and Pollaiuolo approached most nearly to one another; and it was Fiorenzo, and not Perugino, who was the channel through which Florentine influence filtered to Pintoricchio. We recognise Verrocchio in the wide and swollen nostrils, the broad head, the hooking of the little finger, and the treatment of the hair which Fiorenzo adopts; while we perceive that Pollaiuolo has aroused a wish to show more animated action. From Pollaiuolo, too, comes the careful handling of brocaded stuffs, the little, crab-like, clutching hands, the delight in using the costume of the day in all its fantastic picturesqueness. Even more striking is the architectural influence which Fiorenzo conveyed to Pintoricchio. The masters of Umbria became singularly alive to the charm of airy architectural space, and such classic settings as we may date from Brunelleschi's visit to Rome in 1403, and more especially attribute in their working out, to the high, imaginative faculty and Greek spirit of Leo Battista Alberti, whose spacious arcades are often used merely as decoration. At Urbino, in the court of the Ducal Palace, the Umbrians had one example of the highest interest: here was the taste which Lauranna drew from the Florentines, and which passed onwards to Bramante. Piero della Francesca shows, in his "Flagellation" at Urbino, how keenly he feels the charm of placing groups in this wide, distinguished setting; but none assimilates his teaching so fully in those early days as Fiorenzo, whose remarkable series of small panels of the miracles of San Bernardino, give us, as Dr. Schmarsow says, "the first step, without which Pintoricchio is unthinkable."

"Pintoricchio in Rom."

We begin to speculate as to whether Pintoricchio, who was a young man of twenty-two at this time, was helping Fiorenzo; and to ask, Have we here the sign of that talent which was marked by Perugino, with whom he must have been for some years, before he was chosen as his chief assistant in the Sixtine Chapel? Above all, Pintoricchio's landscape is derived from Fiorenzo. The open distance, cut up by small hills and trees, the winding streams flowing through the valleys, and, most characteristic, the poised and toppling rocks, forming archways and overhanging masses, often set about with houses and peopled with tiny figures. An examination of the "Crucifixion" in the Borghese, illustrates the difficulty at this time of distinguishing between Fiorenzo and his pupil. The hard brightness of colour, the drawing of the crucified figure and that of St. Christopher, the heavily marked folds of drapery, the landscape--all recall Fiorenzo; but the figure and head of St. Jerome, the hands, the expressive head of St. Christopher, the free and natural attitude of the Child, are something better than we look for in the earlier painter. If we may really accept this panel, as both Morelli and Berenson assert, as Pintoricchio's work, we may place it as his earliest on his arrival in Rome. The St. Christopher and the Moses of the meeting with the angel in the Sixtine, seem drawn from the same model. The round forehead, full mouth, shape of jaw and broad throat are identical, and it is a very individual face.

His knowledge of architecture, his composition of landscape, the type of many of his figures, Pintoricchio derived from Fiorenzo, and Fiorenzo's was the influence that remained with him most strongly; but though permeating him less thoroughly, less akin to his own temper, Perugino, his elder by only four years, a much greater master, both as regards form and colour, had something to say to his development. We cannot tell when the two first came into contact, but Morelli considers that Perugino went to Florence about 1470. Milanesi, in his notes on Perugino's life by Vasari, says that he received a commission to paint in the Palazzo Pubblico in Perugia in 1475. He was certainly working in 1478 at Cerqueto, in Umbria, so that most likely it was about that date that Pintoricchio joined him, which would have given them at least four years together, before the time came to go to Rome.

We have so little knowledge of any work of Pintoricchio's before his Roman period, that it is difficult to certainly assign paintings to this time. The "Crucifixion" shows no trace of Perugino, but the boy's head at Dresden, which Morelli believes to be an early work, has the solid character and realism which distinguish Perugino's portraits. His influence comes out fully developed in the Sixtine frescoes. That the two men had been working together for some time is obvious, not only by the importance of the share with which the younger was entrusted, but also by the number of drawings which he prepared for Perugino's own frescoes. The elder painter's guiding hand is apparent in the draping, simpler and larger than that of Fiorenzo, the more careful drawing and calmer dignity.

The golden atmospheric effects which were Perugino's greatest gift to art, the feeling for distance, and for the sun-warmed calm of summer, taught Pintoricchio new methods, modified without effacing the teaching of Fiorenzo, and certainly led to a more natural treatment. That Fiorenzo was impressed by the vigorous art of Signorelli, his neighbour of Cortona, is to be seen in his late work, "The Adoration of the Magi." The young men, more strongly drawn than is customary with him, the kings in Eastern dress, the heads of Joseph and of the old king, the drawing of the hands and the Madonna's draperies--all show a freer and closer study of nature, all point to some fresh impulse, the impression of a strong talent upon a weaker one.

The problems which absorbed the great master of Cortona had never much attraction for Pintoricchio, who had not a scientific mind, and whose artistic education, deficient to begin with, was brought to a premature end by his sudden popularity. Yet something he drew from Signorelli, a firmer treatment of the youths in hose and doublet, some attempt to study limbs and muscle. The series left by Benozzo Gozzoli at Montefalco, the paintings of Perugino and Signorelli, were the best examples of form which came in Pintoricchio's way. They could not succeed in making him very strong, but when he draws frankly from the life, you need hardly wish for more telling portraits.

It would be absurd to claim for him sublime creative power, tactile values, mastery over form and movement. He has none of these. His persons rarely stand firmly upon both feet; his pages, his kings and queens, are too often drawn and even coloured like playing-cards; his crowds are motley and ill-arranged. The dry and purely scientific student of the schools of Italy will find it more than easy to demonstrate Pintoricchio's shortcomings: it is less simple to analyse the charm that triumphs in spite of them, and which gives keen pleasure to one side of the artistic nature.

J. A. Symonds says of him that he is a kind of Umbrian Gozzoli, and in his clear and fluent presentation of contemporary life brings us into close relation with the men of his own time. No one loved better than Gozzoli to assemble contemporary celebrities; and in the feeling for incidents of everyday life, in the joy of living, in fondness for garrulous narrative, his frescoes must have been full of suggestion for the Umbrian master of the next half-century, who, in his love for the narrative and the picturesque, surpassed all who had gone before. In Florence, if he had made his trial there, he might have gained more of strong and true study, he might have learned the laws of grouping, of aerial perspective, he might have gained a better knowledge of anatomy, yet in mastering all these, he might have lost something that he possesses: that freshness of feeling which is the spring and sap of all art, that young and winning joy that carries him through scenes of magnificence without losing sense and spirit.

There is in the art of Pintoricchio a direct simplicity of expression and gesture that saves him from conventionality and cloying sweetness. His persons are not above criticism as far as technicalities are concerned, but they have in them this, that they are occupied and absorbed in the business in hand. You may fancy at first that they are artificial, but that is merely their environment; they themselves are simple, they do not pose or look upwards or out of the picture with an affected appeal for admiration. This quality gives to Pintoricchio a truthfulness where he lacks depth. To the last he has a sincerity which underlies his conventionality, just as his dainty care in detail counterbalances his want of freedom and rhythm. His forms lack the nobility of Perugino's, his religious emotion is less deep, but he is not self-conscious, he has a freshness and raciness which saves him from fatiguing by monotonous sweetness. He does not make his paintings a series of excuses for the solution of scientific problems, so that they are more spontaneous, more the outcome of the man's natural unfettered inclination, than are the works of some of those who made greater discoveries in the field of painting.

In the picturesque qualities of his work he is completely a child of the Renaissance. Perhaps none harmonises better with the rich and lavish beauty which haunts us still in every little town of Italy. His feeling, sumptuous yet exquisite, his treatment, na?ve yet distinguished, is the prerogative of that age of fresh perception, and of unspoiled acquaintance with the beautiful. It is the fairy-tale spirit that so endears him to us. Like the mediaeval singers of romance, he guides us through scenes that have a glamour of some day of childhood, when they may have seemed real and possible. The wistful, wide-eyed youths, the tender, dainty Madonnas and angels, the grave, richly-dressed saints and bishops, might all stand for princes, for maidens, and magicians in some enchanted realm of fairy. He does not take us into the region of the tragic, but his fancy, his invention, and resource are fertile and untiring; he leads us on, dazzling, entertaining us with a child-like amusement, disarming criticism by a lovable quality which enlightens us as to the natural sensibility of the painter's mind, a sort of penetrating sweetness with which he can endow his creations. Perhaps the truest explanation of his charm is to be found in the union of two incongruous elements. The artificial and mannered grace, the search after the exquisite and the splendid, joined to the na?ve and childish simplicity, the freshness and arcadian fancy of the Umbrian school. It is such a combination as enchants us in a child masquerading in gorgeous robes, or in a wild honeysuckle dancing over a richly-carved marble column. Certain it is, that here we possess the very cream of that fantastic aspect of the Renaissance in conjunction with the most distinctive features of purely Umbrian art.

Mr. Berenson has given us a fine appreciation of Pintoricchio's feeling for space and for space-decoration. In this, so Umbrian a characteristic, he was a worthy follower of Fiorenzo, the not unworthy second to Perugino, and a forerunner of Raphael. The ample and spacious setting of his groups takes off from their cramped and crowded effect. Where the action is awkward, or the colour heavy, the whole spirit is lightened and lifted as you breathe the air of those delicious landscapes, or wander in imagination under those high-poised arcades, or look out from a palace chamber at the freedom and sweet breezes of a mountain distance. It is the more remarkable that Pintoricchio is able to give us this charm of landscape, as he adheres to his early training, and finishes the most distant parts in delicate detail.

He is mainly empirical rather than scientific, even in his most successful moments, but that his want of drawing was due to insufficient study of the nude is shown by the fact that his touch is fine and strong, his faces, hands and feet, always well and firmly drawn, his outlines delicate and decisive. He individualises his faces, and the bystanders in his crowded scenes show a most interesting variety and reality.

Pintoricchio never shows the ear in his female heads. In the men's it is large, placed high, with the inner cartilage strongly defined. The hand has a short metacarpus and long fingers, the thumb well separated, and the little finger hooked in Fiorenzo's manner. He paints with a full brush, and has a heavy, liquid touch in fresco, but in working in panel he shows a beautiful surface quality which oil painting could not surpass.

FIRST PERIOD IN ROME

A fact that another has once discovered and substantiated seems so obvious to those who come after, that they can hardly understand how it could so long have remained unrecognised. To Morelli belongs the credit of having swept away the tradition that in Signorelli and Perugino were to be found the authors of the two frescoes, "The Journey of Moses" and "The Baptism," on either side of the altar-piece in the Sixtine Chapel. After four hundred years of gathering oblivion came one who looked with open eyes, disregarding all mere tradition, and who saw the handwriting of Pintoricchio writ large upon the walls, waiting there, full within sight, yet overlooked, till, after centuries, the truth is acknowledged, unmistakable, supported not only by internal evidence but by drawings and studies--direct testimony affording conclusive proof of their authorship.

Among the assistants brought by Perugino, were "Rocco Zoppo and Bernardino Betti, called il Pintoricchio." The operations of the first were limited to certain portraits of the Rovere family in the altar-piece, which at that time represented the "Assumption," by Perugino, with the "Finding of Moses" and the "Nativity of Christ" as the beginning of the two sacred histories. Pintoricchio's place, in his master's estimation, was a very different one. We have no reason to doubt that he was Perugino's right-hand man. From the degree to which he has imbibed his style, he must have been working with him for some time before, and the drawings in the Venetian sketch-book, as it is generally called, so long erroneously attributed to Raphael, make it clear that he supplied Perugino with designs for several of his principal figures, which the master altered slightly to suit his taste when he came to transfer them to the plaster.

Vol. iii.

The attribution of these two great frescoes to the younger master has made a great difference to his place in art. In some ways they are the finest and truest works he has left us; it is curious that they are the first that can with certainty be ascribed to him.

Morelli, in appealing to the internal testimony of the frescoes in the Sixtine Chapel, tells us it was their landscape backgrounds which first opened his eyes. He further cites the overcrowding in the composition--"a fault which Pintoricchio very often commits, Perugino hardly ever." Even the falcon in the air is repeated by Pintoricchio in his frescoes at Siena. The children he compares with those in the chapel in Ara Coeli. He sees the character of the master plainly stamped on many of the individual figures, and on the plan of the composition. Evidence more minute and conclusive is derived from the book of drawings to which I have already alluded. Towards the middle of the nineteenth century these, on the authority of Professor Bossi, were assigned to Raphael. Bossi bought the book at a sale, and deciding that they were studies by the great Urbinate, was full of elation at the acquisition of such a priceless treasure. When at Bossi's death they were bought by the nation, Passavant, Count Cicognara, and Marchese Estense, all noted connoisseurs, unhesitatingly pronounced them to be by Raphael, and for his work they still pass in the Accademia in Venice.

It would take far too much space to go with Morelli through all the fifty-three drawings, with a circumstantial criticism which leaves only three to the younger master. We must content ourselves with examining those which Pintoricchio used for figures in frescoes which remain to us. A number of these examples occur in "The Journey of Moses." On one sheet is a sketch for the woman kneeling with outstretched arms, who performs the rite upon the little son of Moses. On another page is a study for the drapery of the seated woman. Again, the heads of four women are drawn on one sheet; no less than three of these are introduced in the fresco. One of the two upper heads is used for the woman bearing a jar, the position being very slightly altered; while of the two lower heads, that on the left is a study for Zipporah leading her child, the other for the head of the woman with the child upon her knee. The quaint head-dresses are reproduced to a nicety: one with outstanding bows on either side, and the loose, flying scarf, knotted in front, the other with the scrolled cornucopia-like ornament curling round the ear. For "The Baptism" we have a study of the seated woman in the background, and for two of the nude figures of youths. For Perugino's fresco, "The Giving of the Keys," Pintoricchio has left two drawings for St. John, standing with his hand upon his breast; one of the two is ruled in squares for transferring to the wall, and this is the one adopted by Perugino. From two other studies figures have been introduced; the cloaked man, third from the left, and two just above, in the background. There is also an elaborate drawing for the Madonna in the altar-piece in Santa Maria del Popolo, and a drawing for the lion in a scene from the life of St. Jerome in the same church. We thus have no fewer than thirteen heads and figures, clearly recognisable as studies for frescoes painted before Raphael was six years old.

The drawings, fine and delicate as they are, have the stiffness, the careful, square-crossed hatching which is found in others by Pintoricchio, also his shape of hand and foot, and the narrow, elongated forms and in-bent knees.

Pintoricchio was now twenty-eight. He must already have produced a great deal of work, but not only have we no trace of it, but what is left is almost all known to be of later date. However obscure his life before he came to Rome, his proceedings after that are well known, and there is hardly a year unaccounted for, or which cannot be almost certainly filled up from inference.

The scene on the opposite wall of the "Baptism of Christ" is much fuller of figures than the "Journey of Moses." Separated incidents are more largely made use of, in the archaic mode which the artists of the Renaissance soon after this abandoned. That the central figures are a copy of Perugino's "Baptism" at Rouen need be no argument that the latter had an active share in it himself. The angels overhead are the same that Perugino and all his school have reproduced many times, and this interchange or imitation was merely a proper compliment between master and pupil. Pintoricchio here owes no more to Perugino than the latter does to Verrocchio, of whose "Baptism," in Florence, with the angels kneeling by, we are strongly reminded. St. John is a type of great freshness and individuality: the long lean form has simplicity and directness of action, the shape of hand and foot, the blacker and more angular draperies, are all unlike the master and like the pupil. St. John pours the water with a painstaking, literal intention. In the frescoes by Perugino at Foligno and at Rouen, his eyes are raised, his body thrown gracefully on one side, and the little cup is raised aloft with a sort of symbolical wave, while the contemplative angels kneeling around are very unlike Pintoricchio's prim little attendants.

The old Pope died before the paint was dry upon the walls of the chapel by which his name is best remembered; but long before his companions had got down to the west end, Pintoricchio must have done his share, though he may still have worked at draperies and minor details in his master's allotment. What he had achieved had established his reputation, and when he went forth it was as an independent artist, himself an employer of assistants, soon to be the honoured recipient of papal commissions.

To this time we may assign the panel painting of the "Madonna teaching the Child to read," which is now at Valencia. Indeed, Dr. Schmarsow holds it to be his earliest known work. It was formerly at Xativ?, and was sent as a present to his native city by Roderigo Borgia, and was placed later in a chapel which his brother Francesco built to his memory. The crest of the Borgias shows that it was painted for that house, and the donor himself, as a comparatively young man, kneels on the right, with his mitre on the ground by his side.

We can trace the likeness to that other kneeling Pope in the Borgia apartments, though the features are less strongly marked. In this little panel, both the Mother and Child are standing,--He mounted on a chest, upon which the crest is painted; she with one hand tenderly placed on His shoulder, while the other holds the open book. She has the same type to which Pintoricchio was faithful, the egg-shaped face, arched brows and close shut mouth. The heavy folds of the mantle are starred and edged with gold, and the Child's robe is of rich gold brocade. The picture is full of feeling, but is stiff in drawing and almost Byzantine in style. The delightful little lunette in Sant' Onofrio in Rome, painted about 1505 by one of his scholars, is adapted from this picture, of which the master must have retained a sketch. The same follower was employed on the apse, where scenes by Peruzzi alternate with several in Pintoricchio's manner, though they are far too ill-drawn to be from his hand.

We have no means of deciding what was the first important commission the young painter undertook after he left the Sixtine Chapel. The German critics, however, agree in placing the Buffalini Chapel in Ara Coeli as his next work. Morelli thinks it was later on account of the decoration of "grottesques," but it has a simplicity and absence of ornament more akin to the Sixtine work than to Pintoricchio's later gorgeous achievements, and he uses much of the same soft grey colour. It is not unlikely that he would have brought a special commendation from the Buffalini of Perugia to those members settled in Rome, and it is easy to see how fresh in his mind were the architectural traditions of Fiorenzo. The chapel, being painted almost entirely by his own hand, looks as if he had not yet gathered together so many assistants, and a little later, loaded with papal commissions, he would hardly have had time to devote to a private citizen.

It seems to me that we have scarcely any work of his for which we can feel such unalloyed admiration as that in this little chapel in the dim old church upon the Capitoline Hill, where from the midst of classic marbles and pre-historic legends, you pass into the quiet side aisle, and the level rays of the golden evening sunshine that pour through a little west window, light up the story of the mediaeval saint as illustrated by his Umbrian name-child.

In the roof, in four triangles, are the "Four Evangelists": St. Matthew looking up as for inspiration, dipping his pen in the ink held by a beautiful kneeling angel-figure at his side. Both this figure and that of St. Luke are very broadly and freely painted. Steinmann points out that we find them almost repeated, apparently by a scholar, in the sacristy of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere. This church has been closed for two years for repairs--I have not been able to see the frescoes.

It is on the opposite wall, and on that above the altar, that the painter has put forth his best efforts, and has produced work which, if he ever equalled, he never surpassed.

In the arches above the left hand wall is "San Bernardino" as he arrayed himself in camel hair and sackcloth and went into the wilderness to study, leaving his rich home and his gay companions in Siena. The population of the city comes out to interview him, grave elders with turbaned heads, young men dressed in the height of fantastic fashion. The saint, absorbed in the study of his Bible, does not even perceive them as they gaze on him with wonder mixed with reverence, recalling the devotion he has already shown during the visit of the plague to Siena. The grass on which he walks is besprinkled with spring flowers, arums with their red seed-pods, hyacinths and anemones; a little stream trickles through the green past mossy tree stumps, and the tall towers of Siena are seen afar in the valley. Below, the whole breadth of wall is devoted to the burial procession of the saint. Here is a great market-place surrounded with airy buildings, such buildings as Fiorenzo had used in those other legends of San Bernardino, which Pintoricchio would naturally have thought of as he drew his design; indeed, we have little difficulty in tracing those which he specially adopted.

Patron Saint of Lodovico Buffalini.

LIFE IN ROME--CONTINUED

Vasari, iii. p. 498.

Inside, the three great halls on the ground floor, though partly whitewashed and even built up, keep some remains of past splendour. On a beam can still be read the date at which the palace was finished, 1490.

There is still a good deal of the original gilding left on the wooden ceilings, and where the whitewash has been scraped away, shadowy heads of apostles are to be seen, and fine and delicate Renaissance ornament. The whole resembles the designs for the Colonna Palace, and what can still be made out appears to be by the master himself, elegant and decisive in touch. All sorts of animals are made use of--a winged stag drinks from a cornucopia, sea-gods and mermaids are instructing nymphs to ride on dolphins, a sphinx plays with a dragon, satyrs are placed in a vintage scene, sirens beguile centaurs with music--all in the fancy of the Revival, exuberant, yet full of dainty grace. Bits of marble work strike the eye here and there--the heraldic bearing of Rovere, the eagle of Alidori; but there is little left to tell us of the glory of the princely house, of the great churchman who built it, or of the Umbrian master he employed to decorate it.

The exultant motto which he placed on a marble tablet to celebrate its completion, looks down from the decaying wall and speaks to us in words half sad, half mocking: "This house shall stand till the ant has drunk up the sea, and till the tortoise has crept round the world."

The beautiful church of Santa Maria del Popolo, restored by Pope Sixtus in 1472, and subsequently rendered a very storehouse of art by his successors and their cardinal kinsmen, would be, if it had been left with all its original decorations, one of the finest monuments to Pintoricchio's art in Italy. A great deal still remains, but much has been swept away. We cannot be quite certain of the exact date of each chapel, but his work here, with the exception of the choir, was carried out during the next few years.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet