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The Great Masters in Painting and Sculpture
PINTORICCHIO

Edited by G. C. Williamson

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PINTORICCHIO

BY
EVELYN MARCH PHILLIPPS

LONDON
GEORGE BELL & SONS
1901

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CONTENTS

PAGE
List of Illustrations			vii
Bibliography			xi
Pedigree			xiii
Chapter	I.	Biographical	1
	II.	Derivation and Character of his Art	19
	III.	First Period in Rome	36
	IV.	Life in Rome—continued	55
	V.	The Borgia Apartments	64
	VI.	The Same, and the Castel Sant’ Angelo	86
	VII.	Spello	100
	VIII.	Siena and the last of Rome	106
	IX.	The Library at Siena	115
	X.	Panel Paintings	139
Catalogue of the Works of Pintoricchio			153
	Austria-Hungary		155
	British Isles		155
	France		156
	Germany		156
	Italy		157
	Spain		162
Chronological Table			163
Index			167

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE
Portrait of a Boy	Dresden Gallery	Frontispiece   16
A Miracle of San Bernardino, by Fiorenzo di Lorenzo	Perugia Gallery	24
Four Heads of Women (From the Sketch-Book)	Venice	40
The Journey of Moses	Sixtine Chapel, Rome	42
The Baptism of Christ	The same	44
The Burial of San Bernardino. (From the Buffalini Chapel)	Church of Ara Cœli, Rome	50
The Glorification of San Bernardino, from the same	The same	54
The Annunciation	Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome	68
Pope Alexander VI. adoring the Risen Christ	The same	70
Detail, Figure of the Pope	The same	72
Detail from the Assumption of the Virgin—the Kneeling Man	The same	74
The Story of Susanna	The same	74
St. Anthony and St. Paul—Hermits	The same	76
The Demon Women, a Detail from the above	The same	78
The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian	The same	78
The Dispute of St. Catherine	The same	80
The Figure of St. Catherine, another Detail from the same	Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome	80
Group of Heads, a Detail from the above	The same	82
General View of the Hall of Liberal Arts and Sciences	The same	86
The Madonna and Child, with Angels (over the door)	The same	88
Figure representing Arithmetic	The same	90
Figure representing Music	The same	92
The Adoration of the Shepherds	Sta. Maria Maggiore, Spello	102
The Annunciation	The same	104
Portrait of Pintoricchio	The same	104
The Knight of Aringhieri	Siena	110
Symbolical Scene, from the Pavement in the Cathedral	The same	112
The Return of Ulysses	National Gallery, London	114
Study for Fresco I., by Raphael	Venice	118
Æneas Piccolomini on his way to the Council at Basel	The Library, Siena	120
Frederick III. crowning Æneas Piccolomini as Poet Laureate	The same	126
Æneas Piccolomini sent by Frederick III. to Pope Eugenius IV.	The same	128
A Group of Men, Detail from Fresco IX.	The same	132
Æneas Piccolomini elected Pope under the name of Pius II.	The same	134
Pope Pius II. at Ancona	The same	136
The Madonna and Child, with St. John. (From the large ancona)	Perugia Gallery	140
The Madonna and Child, with Angels and a Donor	Duomo, San Severino	142
The Madonna and Child	National Gallery, London	146
St. Augustine, St. Benedict, and St. Bernard, from the Reliquary	Berlin Gallery	148
The Christ-Child and St John the Baptist. (From the Holy Family)	Siena Gallery	148
Christ bearing the Cross	Pal. Borromeo, Milan	150

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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[1] PINTORICCHIO

CHAPTER I
BIOGRAPHICAL

PINTORICCHIO is not one of the most famous painters of the Italian Renaissance, and perhaps no painter who has left us such a mass of work, and work of such interest, has attracted so little criticism and inquiry. From the time of Vasari’s slighting biography onwards, he has been included among minor painters and passed over with very superficial examination. No separate life of him in English exists, no attempt has been made to consider his work in anything like exhaustive detail, or to define his charm. It would be idle to claim for him a place in the first rank: some may question his right to stand in the second; in some of the greatest essentials he will not pass muster—yet charm he does possess, qualities whose fascination draws those who are open to it back to him again and again with fresh pleasure; and for this, and because he presents us with so true a type of the Umbrian painter of the Renaissance, it is worth while trying to unravel his history.

Before we try to disentangle the origin of his art, before we compare his different periods and examine the paintings he has left us, we must make some[2] attempt to arrive at his personality, to see the man as he was, to gain what clue we may, by this means, to the work in which his life was spent.

Nothing can be more meagre than the few hints we have of his origin and early history, and yet we can probably construct a pretty correct outline of their chief features. Vermiglioli in 1837 made a careful examination of the archives of Perugia and Siena, and was the first to endeavour to rehabilitate the artist, and to re-awaken that public interest which was so liberally bestowed on him in his lifetime. He was born at Perugia about 1454, if we are to believe Vasari, who tells us that when he died in 1513 he was in his fifty-ninth year. His father was one Benedetto or Benedecto, and he was christened Bernardino Benedetto (afterwards shortened to Betto or Betti). The famous saint, Bernardino of Siena, had died ten years earlier and was canonised in 1550. During his last years his preaching had made a great sensation in Perugia, and no doubt numbers of children born at this time were dedicated to him. A document of 1502 exists at Siena,[1] in which Pintoricchio is styled the son of Benedetto di Biagio, so that we thus learn the bare names of his father and grandfather. We have no means of knowing their standing, but the entire absence of any mention of relatives or inheritance makes it probable that he came of poor people, and was not blessed with any close family ties. We know nothing of what was the childhood of the “little painter,” only the nickname of “il sordicchio,” the deaf one, suggests that this infirmity may have been [3]one reason why he was dedicated to an artist’s career; but the deafness could hardly have been very remarkable, as it is never alluded to otherwise, nor does it appear to have hampered Bernardino’s intercourse with the world. There is a faint tradition[2] that his home was near the Porto San Christoforo, which, while hardly worth notice, indicates that his youth was passed in Perugia.

From the tendencies which all his life clung about his work, we surmise that he began his artistic career under one of the miniature painters who then flourished in Perugia. Vermiglioli refers to a series of miniature paintings belonging to his family, which Orsini, in his researches into the history of Umbrian painting, had already mentioned as resembling Pintoricchio’s work, especially in the use made of architecture. At the time he was growing up there was a flourishing college of miniaturists in Perugia, which had reconstructed its statutes in 1436.

Vasari thus comments upon Bernardino: “Some are helped by fortune, without being much endowed by merit; ... one knows that Fortune has sons who depend on her help without any virtue of their own, and she is pleased that they should owe their exaltation to her favour, when they would never have been known for their own merit.”[3] But Vasari evidently knew nothing of the good or bad fortune of Pintoricchio’s early days, and was merely balancing his own estimate of the artist against the consideration he received in later years.

Natural bent and circumstance combined to form [4]Bernardino Betti into an Umbrian of the Umbrians, placing him on the less powerful but more indigenous side of the sharply-divided line which ran through the artistic life of the country. There is sufficient suggestion of Benedetto Bonfigli in some of his work, to make it probable that he joined the school which Bonfigli had established in Perugia in the early part of the fifteenth century. Vasari speaks of him as an assistant and friend of the older master. Here he would have been brought into close contact with Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, who must have been considerably the senior of Pintoricchio, as he was undertaking important commissions as early as 1472.[4] It is this master whose influence is most strongly stamped upon him. Afterwards, as we shall see, he constantly transferred figures from Fiorenzo’s panels to his own, while in the older man’s compositions we can pick out others which have more of Pintoricchio than Fiorenzo; but the latter, though full of originality and attraction as he is, never advances beyond a certain point, and always retains something of the archaic.

It is in 1482 that Bernardino first emerges from the realm of conjecture, and appears, forming part of that brilliant group which was gathered together in Rome to decorate the walls of Sixtus IV.’s newly-built chapel.

Already he may have been confused in Umbria with the very inferior master, Bernardino Mariotto of Perugia, who lived for many years at San Severino, where he had a school in the monastery of the old town. His paintings have often been [5]assigned to his contemporary, and this is very likely the reason that the latter always signs and calls himself Pintoricchio. While he endeavoured to guard against being credited with works he had not produced, he has been robbed of those really due to him. It is strange indeed that for several centuries the part he took in such a great work as the Sixtine Chapel should have been ignored, for it was the success of these frescoes which sufficed to establish his fame in Rome, and for some years after this we find him in full employment there. The chapel was completed in 1485, but Pintoricchio’s part was probably finished earlier, and it is at this time that most critics concur in placing his work in the church of Ara Cœli. He had commended himself to the patronage and friendship of Domenico della Rovere, brother of Pope Sixtus, and was a guest at his house in the Palazzo di SS. Apostoli, where he painted a decoration, and he was also employed at this time in the Palazzo Colonna. In the two following years, Pintoricchio was employed in the Belvedere of the Vatican by Pope Innocent VIII. He painted there the series of pictures of towns owning the papal sway, which Taja mentions as existing, though in a much injured condition, in 1750, and which was repainted under Pius VII.[5] In the years immediately following he was decorating the chapels in Santa Maria del Popolo, doing much with his own hand, but already employing assistants and superintending their share.

A document in the archives of the cathedral at Orvieto, as to which Vasari knew nothing, or was silent, dated 1492, informs us of an agreement made with [6]the chapter to paint two evangelists and two Fathers in the cathedral. The price was to be a hundred ducats. There was a good deal of coming and going between Rome and Orvieto, and in that year he was paid fifty ducats for the portion of work done, and also began a small picture in the tribune, but fell into a violent quarrel with the ecclesiastics, who averred that the first part of the work was not painted according to agreement. Their real objection seems to have been that they were getting frightened at the quantity of gold and ultramarine employed, which was more than the chapter could afford. There was some talk of taking the work from him, and it was certainly interrupted for a time.[6] He was probably very willing to return to Rome, for a third Pope was now providing him with work,—no less a personage than Alexander VI., who, as Cardinal Borgia, had already given great encouragement to the artist in Rome, and who now entrusted Pintoricchio with the decoration of his private apartments. The quarrel with the monks at Orvieto must, however, have been made up, and he returned to finish their transept, for we find Pope Alexander writing to the Orvietans in March 1494 to beg that they will release Pintoricchio and let him come back to Rome to finish what he had begun in the Borgia rooms.

In this year the Pope remunerated him by adding to the money paid in the contracts a grant of an ample piece of land, situated at Chiugi near Perugia, at an annual rent of thirty baskets of grain.[7] The [7]Borgia rooms could but just have been completed when, in January 1495, the Pope was driven to take refuge from the French king’s invasion of his city in the fortified castle of Sant’ Angelo. His court painter would naturally have gone with him, and when the Pope fled to Orvieto and Perugia in the summer of 1495, Pintoricchio went homewards in his train. In the next few months, an altar-piece for the monks of the monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli must have been under discussion; for in February 1496 the contract was signed for the great polyptych now in the Gallery at Perugia. The fulfilment of this contract had to await the master’s leisure; for a month later, on March 15th, he signs a fresh contract with the Orvietans for two Fathers of the church to be painted in the great chapel over the principal altar. He was to receive fifty ducats, six quarters of grain, such wine as might be necessary, and to have the use of a house, besides what gold and ultramarine he might require. The archives of the cathedral contain minute records of every payment made, and on the 15th November of that year he received the last instalment.[8] The documents contain allusions to other paintings by him, but the only traces that remain are a St. Gregory, a prophet, and two angels which have some likeness to his school or his followers.

In 1497 we have a deed, issued October 24th, commuting the tax levied upon the painter’s grant of land. In this is recited and set forth Pintoricchio’s complaint that the tax is too heavy, and that it swallows up all the revenues. The claim is admitted to be well founded [8]on the part of “a faithful and devoted servant of Alexander and the Church, to whom a recompense is due for his art in painting and adorning the apostolic palace and our residence in arc castri Angeli.” Instead of the grain, a yearly tax of two pounds of white wax was adjudged on July 28th, to be paid on the Feast of the Assumption, for two years, by decree of the Cardinal Camerlengo.[9] A further endorsement shows that the municipal authorities were inclined to ignore the papal decree; but a third brief, in May 1498, confirms the tenure of the land and tenements, and in February 1499 the first commutation is extended for a further term. After all these gracious concessions, it is surprising to find the tax-gatherers in the same year again trying to exact the condoned thirty baskets. Pintoricchio once more appealed to the Pontiff, with whom he was in high favour, and Alexander ordered that restitution should be made in effects or money, according to the price at which grain was valued on the Piazza in Perugia on the first Saturday in August; and in September we find Pintoricchio receiving of the vice-treasurer, Bonifazio Coppi, eighty florins in return for the tax extorted in opposition to the papal behest.[10]

While this interesting decision was in the balance, Bernardino was once more in Rome, and able to plead his own cause, for about July 1497 he was recalled there, and spent a year frescoing the castle of Sant’ Angelo for the Pope, but in the following year he was back at home, and finished the polyptych for Santa Maria dei Fossi. Probably about this time he married, and he [9]may also have visited Spoleto, besides producing a good many panel paintings, for no very definite work can be assigned to these years in Perugia. He was very naturally engrossed with his new wife, and busy with his little property, and not undertaking any important commissions.

In October of the following year, Cæsar Borgia, son of the painter’s great patron, was encamped at Deruta, the little town that lies out among the hills, a few miles west of Perugia. Pintoricchio visited him here while he was resting after his campaign in the Romagna, and obtained an order desiring the vice-treasurer to get permission for him to sink a cistern in his house in Perugia. What interests us even more than this domestic detail is Cæsar’s statement that he has “again” taken into his service Bernardino Pintoricchio of Perosa, whom he always loved because of his talents and gifts, and he desires that in all things he shall be treated “as one of ours.”[11] Cæsar’s expression that he had “again” taken him into his service, suggests that he had not quite recently been retained by the Pope.

Very soon after his visit to the Borgia’s camp, he was in treaty with the Cardinal of Spello, thirteen miles from Perugia, to decorate the chapel of his House; but before leaving home he was elected Decemvir of the city, a proof of how high he stood in repute among his fellow-citizens. It could only have been an honorary distinction, for his work in Spello must have taken all his remaining time in Umbria to accomplish. One short visit he was to pay to his [10]own province, but early in 1502 the summons reached him which changed the course of his life. Cardinal Francesco Piccolomini made him the offer which caused him to move to Siena and begin one of his most important undertakings.

Siena is a long journey from Perugia across the hills and plains that lie around Lake Thrasymene, past Chiugi, and so through the breadth of Italy. It brought the painter into new surroundings, and took him quite out of the beaten track. The long and elaborate contract between the Cardinal and the painter must have taken no little time to discuss and agree upon, but it was finished and signed June 29, 1502. During the following autumn and winter, he made his preparations, gathered his workmen and assistants together, and by the spring of 1503 was hard at work in the building, beginning with the ceiling, which we are able, with tolerable certainty, to determine was nearly completed by the autumn.

This part of the work may have been just seen by the Cardinal, who became Pope, September 21st, 1503, dying three weeks later, and bringing Pintoricchio’s work to a standstill. His patron’s death freed him for the time from his inability to take private orders, and he promptly accepted one from the family of Aringhieri, and between this autumn and the following August, painted the frescoes in the Chapel of San Giovanni in Siena Cathedral; while on March 13th, in the spring of 1505, he was paid for the design of Fortune for the cathedral pavement. Rather before this, the work in the library had been begun, as it was only in abeyance for a little over a year;[11] but the death of Cardinal Andrea Piccolomini in June 1505 again delayed its progress for a short time. Pintoricchio started thereupon on a visit to Rome, which must have been crowded with work if he now accomplished the decoration of the choir of Santa Maria del Popolo, and returned early in 1506 to continue the work in the library. It now went on with no further hindrance. In May or June 1508 all the compartments were finished, and the building handed over to the Piccolomini family, from whom the last payment under the contract was received in January 1509.

There is no document to show exactly when he married, but from the table in Milanesi’s edition of Vasari, a daughter, Adriana, who had married a Perugian, died in 1519. She, and probably two others, Faustina and Egidia, must have been born before he left for Siena. There is, however, no trace in the Perugian archives of his wife or children, and Mariotti, writing in 1788, suggests that a search among the documents of Siena may determine the question. Here it is that we find entries of the birth of those children born after he moved to Siena, Giulio Cesare, Camillo Giuliano, and a second Faustina. His wife, as we learn from the petitions she presented after his death, was Grania, daughter of one Niccolò of Bologna or Modena. From the number of her children, and the unhappy relations which seem to have existed between husband and wife, we surmise that Pintoricchio married a woman much younger than himself. If three children were born before 1502, he probably married about 1496-98, at which time he was living[12] in Perugia, after his return from Rome, when he would have been forty-two to forty-four years of age.

In the year that his first son was born, Pintoricchio matriculated at the College of Painters at Perugia. He is there described as Bernardinus Becti, detto il Pinturicchio, whose habitation was at the Porta San Angelo.[12] In December of the same year, the magistrates of Siena approve of the Commune of Montemassi making him a donation of twenty “moggie” of land.[13] Fortified, doubtless, by his success in combating Perugian taxes, he immediately applies to the Council of Siena to free the grant for thirty years from taxes of “dazzi and gabelli.” This was conceded, with the exception of the gate tax. The petition runs:

“Bernardino Pintoricchio, who now addresses the most respected officials (of the Balia), is the servant of your Lordships, and not the least among renowned painters; for whom, as Cicero has written, the Romans in early times held but little. Yet after the increase of the empire, and in consequence of Eastern victories and the conquest of the Greek cities, they called the best from all parts of the world, not hesitating to seize all the finest pictures and sculptures which they could discover. They admitted painting to be supreme, similar to the liberal arts, and a rival to poesy. And artists being usually esteemed by those who govern republics, the said Bernardino has elected Sienna to be his home, hoping to live and reside there; (therefore) confiding in the clemency of your Lordships, and considering the adverse nature of the times, the [13]smallness and diminution of profits, and the weight of his family; having heard also that craftsmen taking up their abode here receive grants of immunities, he prays exemption for thirty years from all taxes whatever, whether present or to come.”[14]

In the spring of 1508 he was back across Italy to little Spello, where, in the transept of Sant’ Andrea, he left an altar-painting, a Madonna and Saints, which does not add materially to his reputation. On a little stool in the foreground of the picture is painted a letter of Cardinal Baglioni, dated April 8th, 1508, written from his castle of Rocca di Zocco, full of affectionate assurances, and asking the painter to return to Siena. Its inclusion has been imputed to Pintoricchio’s vanity; but a man who had been friends with Popes, and who had long been courted on all sides, was hardly likely to be uplifted by the friendship of a simple Cardinal-bishop. It is more likely that he was bitten with a rather inartistic fancy for painting objects lying about, to deceive the eye, and hit upon this as an appropriate one.

He now paid his last visit to Rome: Pope Julius II. had summoned him, together with Perugino, Signorelli, and others, to consider the decoration of the Vatican rooms. Giambattista Caporali, the historian, speaks of a supper at which they were all present at the house of Bramante. Their host was the man who had introduced young Raphael to the Pope, and Pintoricchio, among the rest, had the mortification of seeing himself superseded in the city where he had been foremost a few years earlier. He and Signorelli returned to [14]Siena together, and the master of Cortona stood sponsor to the child born in January 1509. In October, Pintoricchio had sold a house in the third ward of the city to Pandolfo Petrucci for 420 florins. He was in close contact at this time with that great merchant prince, and was employed with Signorelli on Petrucci’s new palace, where he painted the frescoes, of which one, the “Return of Ulysses,” in the National Gallery, is all that remains. We find him buying land in Siena and selling it in Perugia, making his will, and arranging his affairs. In the last year of his life he painted that brilliant and tender little picture of “Christ bearing the Cross,” now in the Borromeo Palace at Milan. He was suspicious and unhappy about his wife’s behaviour, and a fresh will was made, to which a codicil was added in September and another in October. In the first he deprived her of some of the money he had already left her, but he returned it in the last addition.

Vasari’s story of the cause of his death, which took place December 11th, 1513, can be nothing but a fable. He tells us that Pintoricchio was executing some work for the Fathers of San Francesco, and being hampered by a heavy bureau in the room assigned to him, insisted on having it moved. In the transit it broke open, and a treasure of gold was discovered in the secret drawer, so much to the chagrin of the painter that he never held up his head again. The friends who knew the painter in Siena do not allude to any such occurrence; and the popular master, entrusted with more commissions than he could execute, well paid and honoured by all men, was not likely to[15] be upset by the sight of some gold coins, even if he could persuade himself that he had any right to them. The real circumstances of his death were sadder, if less sensational. Sigismondo Tizio, a Sienese historian, writer of a mass of almost unedited matter, who was his attached friend and his neighbour in the parish of San Vincenzo and Sant’ Anastasia, has left a record of his last illness, in which he accuses his wife Grania of causing his death by her neglect. Tizio says that she went about with her lover, Girolamo di Paolo, nicknamed il Paffo, a soldier of the Piazza at Siena, and that Bernardino was shut up and left to die of starvation; that some women heard his cries and went to his assistance, and that it was from them that Tizio afterwards learned these particulars. From Tizio’s way of describing it he seems to accuse her of a deliberate attempt to starve her husband; but as no proceedings were ever taken against her, and she succeeded in peace to her inheritance, we may gather that she was not guilty of actually criminal conduct, though her neglect was sufficient to hasten the death of a man attacked by serious illness and needing careful nursing. Bernardino Betti lies buried in the Parish Church of San Vincenzo, joining the Oratory of the Contrade of the Ostrich. In 1830 the Abbé de Angelis put up a plate with an inscription to his memory. Mariotti speaks of a Giovanni di Pintoricchio who was a canon of the Cathedral of Perugia in 1525; but Pintoricchio’s own sons would have then been too young to hold such a post, and we hear nothing in later years of his descendants.

After his death Grania lived on in Siena, and two[16] years after, as his executor and trustee, sold two lots of land to one of the Chigi for 1677 florins. Again, in the following year, she sought permission to sell the land which was the portion of her daughter Faustina, and she makes a will which is dated May 22nd, 1518. The man who was said to be her lover afterwards married her daughter Egidia.

We possess several portraits of Pintoricchio from his own hand; all are sufficiently like one another, though painted at different periods of his life, to assure us that they were like the original. The first is in the fresco of the “Argument of St. Catherine,” in the Borgia Apartments. The painter at this time must have been about thirty-nine years old. His portrait certainly looks much younger; but he was a thin, dark man who very possibly looked less than his years, or he may have purposely represented himself so, as we notice this in other portraits. The face is an interesting and sensitive one, with speaking eyes and a melancholy expression. In the striking head which he has signed and placed as a picture on the walls of the Virgin’s chamber in the chapel of the Baglioni at Spello, the face has sharpened and aged considerably, though it still looks young for a man of fifty-two. The lines have deepened, the mouth is compressed, and the face wears a look of ill-health, almost of suffering. It has the dark, arched brows of the artist, and clever, observant eyes which look out at us, sideways, tending to give a suspicious look, though probably it was only that he saw himself so in a mirror. Again, he stands in the row of portraits in the fresco of the “Canonisation of St. Catherine,” in the Library at[17] Siena. This face, too, has an expression of bitterness and melancholy—pinched lips, and sad, regretful eyes.[15] The self-conscious expression of all leads us to suspect that his was a self-tormenting, morbid nature, such as the artistic temperament and keen sense of beauty might well have combined with a sickly body to produce. In the eyes, too, it is easy to read that fantastic touch which came out in his love for story and for the grotesque, and perhaps there is something of that aloofness which the deafness, which led to his nickname, so often gives.

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 Cæsar’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 [18]dated, and we must be satisfied with mentioning them, and considering the times at which they might have been produced.

[19] 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.

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CHAPTER II

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[20] 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 naïve, 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:

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[21] 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[22] 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 naïve 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 Niccolò 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 Niccolò’s great anconas, the Madonna and Child enthroned in the centre, saints in panels on either side, a Pietà above, which divides an Annunciation into two parts. The types in this last scene certainly resemble Niccolò’s, and were constantly repeated by Bernardino; but the angels in the Pietà 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 Niccolò had left there. Something too he owed to Benedetto Bonfigli; the cheerful naïveté, 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,[23] 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 Pietà at the top of the polyptych painted for Santa Maria dei Fossi.

We have no trace of Pintoricchio himself ever[24] 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 [25]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.”[16]

The natural features of Umbrian scenery, its high-skied plains, its wide valleys, account in a measure for the pre-eminent feeling for space shown by its artists, and for their power to give air and atmosphere to those lofty structures in which they love to place their personages. These little panels, painted at Fiorenzo’s finest period, are sharp and strong, yet fine as miniatures. The figures stand well on the stage. The point of sight is very low, at scarce a third of the whole, so that we have an undue proportion of airy surrounding, though all is on such a small scale. The perspective drawing shows how well-fitted Fiorenzo was to ground his pupil accurately in this, however insufficient his study of anatomy may have been. The drawing of the architecture is fine and true throughout, but in the figures, even if we allow for variations in Fiorenzo himself, we can hardly avoid seeing two different hands. They have all the charm of his manner, a manner essentially Umbrian, while we see a very distinct spirit, a spirit which was shared by Bonfigli, and by such a lesser master as Boccatis da Camerino, a naïve and cheerful tone, a direct simplicity, which is as far removed from the melancholy which broods in the eyes of the rapt saints of Siena, as it is from the scientific temper that ruled within sound of the Arno. Many of the figures are childish in their desire to express emotion, and are [26]almost grotesque in detail, the hair is in a mop, exaggerated till it looks like a huge bird’s nest, the hands are cramped and claw-like, but here and there we meet with graceful, well-proportioned beings, keeping their slender grace, without the angular and unpleasing length of limb which marks their companions. In the panel where San Bernardino raises a youth from the dead, a child playing with a dog recalls Pintoricchio’s putti on the pilasters at Siena. The young man on the right in the same scene, is supple and gracefully draped; a contrast to the wooden movements and stiff draperies of his fellow-pages. Even better is the youth reasoning, in a repetition of the same miracle, with his hand upon his hip and a dark cap perched upon his rippled curls.

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[27] 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[28] 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.

These frescoes might possibly be taken for Perugino’s, but scarcely for Fiorenzo’s; and though Pintoricchio still adheres to the traditions of the latter in his treatment of the details of landscape, he begins to formulate his own scheme of colour and composition. In his angels flying forward from above, on either side of a group of sacred persons, Perugino is copied almost stroke for stroke (allowing for Pintoricchio’s heavier touch) in the assimilation of motifs drawn from older masters. The fold of drapery falling between the knees and narrowing to a point, the over-sleeve flying out in a sweeping curve, the draped tunic and the fluttering ribbons, all become a formula of Perugino’s manner—adopted by all his followers—Lo Spagna, Tiberio d’Assisi, and the rest. Yet, where the treatment approaches most nearly, there remains a constantly differing type. Perugino, in a half-profile, almost invariably inclines the head one way or another,[29] giving to the eye a peculiar ecstatic upward gaze. Pintoricchio rarely uses this attitude. In his drawing of St. John, for Perugino’s fresco, of the giving of the keys, this is just the change the older master, on adopting it, has made to suit his fancy. Pintoricchio has an ineradicable tendency to bring the knees of his figures together. They sway with a peculiar, knock-kneed grace. If we contrast the central group in the “Baptism of Christ” in the Sixtine, with those of Perugino at Rouen, or that at Foligno, painted many years later, we note the sweep inward from the hips, and outward from the knees in the first, while the inclined head and upward gaze in Perugino’s St. John gives place to a more simple and direct expression in that of his pupil. We are always conscious, too, of a less strong, less confident spirit—one more nervous, more personally reflective of moods and idiosyncrasies.

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.

[30] 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,[31] 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 ærial 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[32] 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, naïve 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 mediæval 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 naïve and childish simplicity, the freshness[33] 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.

It is as a decorator that he holds his own most successfully among his contemporaries. It soon became apparent that no one could cover the walls of palace or chapel with an ornamentation so rich and gay, so advantageous to the position, so homogeneous in character. To find any tout ensemble to compare as decoration with the Borgia Apartments we must look at early mosaics, at the opulence of the little church of San Prassede, or the peacock hues of San Vitale[34] at Ravenna. To estimate his achievement we must weigh what he has made of those rooms, “si desespèrément carrées,” or of the oblong and barn-like space of the Libreria in Siena.

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.

When not painting fresco he is constant to the use of tempera. Unfortunately, he is too much given to sacrifice the transparency and depth of his colour by a lavish use of retouching à secco. In order to gratify his love for brilliancy, he produces an opaque surface, and is apt to give us a sort of splendid gaiety in exchange for real depth. His use of his gorgeous pigments is extremely skilful, especially towards the middle period. In the Sixtine Chapel frescoes, he has hardly let himself go, and in the Siena Library he inclines to be gaudy and glaring; but in many of his scenes the greens and peacock-blues, the rich, soft rose-pinks, the purples and autumn gold are those of a man whose nature was keenly alive to the joy of colour. His use of embossed gold is dictated by the same natural bent towards the gay and decorative. This small, mean-looking, deaf man was rarely sensitive to fulness of life, to splendour, and the delight of the eye, and wherever he has covered a wall with his work, or left a panel or an altar-piece, we get a glance back[35] at an age which was not afraid of frank magnificence, guided by a purer taste than we can boast.

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.

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[36] CHAPTER III

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.

It is perhaps owing to Melozzo da Forli being court painter to the Vatican in 1480 that we may attribute the preference shown in the first instance to Umbrians in the choice of decorators for Sixtus IV.’s new chapel. To Perugino the direction seems to have been given in the first place, he and his assistants arriving in Rome in October 1482. Here they would have had[37] a great deal to prepare, the spaces to plan, the Pope’s directions to consider, the ornamentation of the windows and the niches for the martyred Popes to decide upon. The scheme of the type and anti-type which balances the opposite walls, is very probably due to the Pope and his advisers. Pope Sixtus was a writer on theology, was esteemed a man of profound scholarship, and had in the years immediately preceding written several books on important points of doctrine. Perugino was at that time the undisputed head of the school of Umbria, and his religious spirit and conventional treatment of sacred subjects was likely to be much more acceptable to the Holy See than the new spirit of scientific inquiry. The contract between him and the Pope makes it probable that at first he and his assistants were to be entrusted with the entire work. Whether the Pope got impatient and wished to see his chapel more speedily completed, or for what other reason, is uncertain; but when Giuliano della Rovere went to Florence in December, he agreed with a number of Florentines to resort to Rome, and the whole company of artists was gathered there by the year 1483. Foremost among these was Sandro Botticelli, and from documents which have recently come to light we gather that the superintendence of the entire scheme was finally entrusted to him and not to Perugino.

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[38] “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.

Vasari[17] tells us that Pintoricchio worked with Perugino in the Sixtine Chapel, and took a third of the profits, but this testimony afforded no clue to former critics, and for some centuries “The Journey of Moses” was attributed to Luca Signorelli. Burckhardt was the first to dispute this claim, and to ascribe the fresco with more vraisemblance to Perugino.[18] Crowe and Cavalcaselle[19] repudiate the attribution to Signorelli. They see in both this and “The Baptism” the work of Perugino, but in parts, in the young man stripping, and in the youth by his side, they recognise a likeness to Pintoricchio, though in the children of “The Journey” they profess to see plainly the hand of Bartolommeo della Gatta.

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 [39]truest works he has left us; it is curious that they are the first that can with certainty be ascribed to him.

Morelli,[20] 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 Cœli. 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 (detached and on different paper) to the younger master. We must content ourselves with examining those which Pintoricchio used for figures in frescoes which remain [40]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.

[41]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.

Rome had no cinque-cento painters of her own; but none the less, the great traditions of the past, which that century was fast reviving, made her the Mecca of the artists of Italy. That the two frescoes in the Sixtine Chapel were Pintoricchio’s first great commission is probable, and it must have been with exultation that he set to work to give free play to his decorative instincts on the large bare walls. Though the whole is imbued with Perugino’s spirit, and full of motifs copied from him, the composition is not the least like his calm, glowing landscapes and well-ordered, symmetrical groups. The background is all reminiscent of Fiorenzo—the toppling rocks, the little bushy trees, the joyous air of the little figures frolicking on the hillside, the palms and cypresses, the beautifully shaped hollow of the valley, the falcon in the air pursuing smaller birds. The crowded groups are in Pintoricchio’s style; the want of concentration of interest, the narrative spirit running through the[42] whole are just what were most dear to his genius. There has been much discussion as to whether his master helped him. Did Perugino paint the figure of the woman busied with the rite of Circumcision, and of Moses looking on? Or did he execute the heads of any of the Florentine colony who are brought in, and who might have preferred to have their portraits from the hand of the master rather than from that of the pupil? I can find very little trace of Perugino’s own hand, unless it be in the head of Moses on the right, in which the execution of the hair is more in his manner, though not nearly as fine and rippling as he paints it in the frescoes of the keys. The action of the angel in the centre is quite in the manner of Pintoricchio, and Perugino never would have placed the hand of Moses in such an awkward attitude of expostulation. The children are like his in the Buffalini Chapel in the Libreria and Borgia apartments, and contrast favourably with Perugino’s fat, unshapely babes. As a whole, it would be difficult to find a more attractive piece of decorative painting than this. The various scenes, the shepherds dancing at the marriage feast, Jethro and his household taking leave of Moses, the departure of the leader of Israel with his family, and the rite of Circumcision are pressed into one harmonious scene. The background melts naturally into the foreground without appearing confused, and the vigorous white-robed messenger of God, with shimmering hair and wings, drawn sword and outstretched arm, divides the two foreground groups in a manner as original as it is sufficient. Moses, clad in the traditional yellow robe and green mantle, [43]stopping at the angel’s command, is a fine, grave figure of marked personality. The two women occupied with the child on the right, Zipporah leading the little boy, the damsel on the left balancing her jar, are some of the most beautiful and graceful forms that Pintoricchio has given us. The draperies are less voluminous than in later pictures, and fall in straighter, simpler folds, resembling the more statuesque drapery such as we find in the “St. Thomas and the Saviour” of Or San Michele, and which Perugino, on his return from Florence, imparted to his pupil in place of Fiorenzo’s sharply-cut-up folds. Here, too, Pintoricchio proves himself to be, what he was evidently considered in Rome, a landscape-painter of the first rank; and it is especially by the landscape that Morelli tells us he made out the identity of the painter of this fresco. Nothing up to this time had been seen so lovely as this background,—on one side, the low purple hills, touched with golden gleams, running down into the soft distance, on the other, a clear, grassy space, giving a sense of air and gaiety to the little pastoral. Both the frescoes in the Sixtine have undergone such repeated cleanings and restorations that little of the original colour remains, and the effect is somewhat faded and grimy; but we are still able to see with what skill white robes are made use of—an art in which Pintoricchio excels in many of his paintings.

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[44] 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.

In the groups in the background on either hand, listening to the preaching of the Baptist and the Saviour, only one, the St. John on the left, with head raised and inclined and hand on breast, reminds us at all of Perugino. We have a great many of the figures the younger master is so fond of, turning their backs and enveloped in the voluminous folds of great cloaks—a motif which is not common with Perugino, but which Pintoricchio makes lavish use of in the Libreria, and which he derives from Fiorenzo, who often brings it in. Here we find the seated woman, [45]for which he has left the drawing, who, with the children clinging to her, looks up and listens to the Baptist on the right, and who, in her gracefully swathed garments, is beautiful enough for the pencil of Botticelli or Agostino di Duccio. We also find a study for the nude figure at the back with outstretched hand. These nudes are among Bernardino’s few attempts at anatomical drawing, to which he never takes kindly. We cannot say that they show much real acquaintance with form, though it is evident that they are from the living model, which at this time he was faithfully seeking to render. Many of the portraits are admirable. It would be difficult to find stronger, more satisfactory heads, more solid in drawing and more full and interesting in expression, than three or four of the heads in the group standing a little way behind Christ, or the old man grasping his napkin on the opposite side, in whom Dr. Steinmann suggests we see the Pope’s brother-in-law, Giovanni Basso della Rovere, who died this year, and whose shrewd features and close shut mouth we recognise again in his tomb in Santa Maria del Popolo. The deepest interest of the picture centres in these fine portraits of men of the time, and in the landscape which, though this fresco is the most injured of all, is still beautiful in its varied light and shade, and in the lie of the ground in hill and slope and distant vale.

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[46] 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 Xativà, 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[47] 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 Cœli 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 mediæval saint as illustrated by his Umbrian name-child.

Hardly any saint could have been more dear and familiar to the sons of mid-Italy than San Bernardino[48] of Siena, the disciple of their beloved St. Francis, and one who had exercised such a strong and recent influence over his followers. He died only nine years before Pintoricchio was born, and as he grew up the little Bernardino must have heard ardent references to his holy patron from men who had crowded round the pulpit outside the cathedral in Perugia. His gonfalon, painted by Bonfigli, hung in the Church of San Bernardino. His thin face, with its pinched mouth, was familiar to every one, and stories of his wisdom, his virtue, his miracles, were fresh on men’s lips. Pintoricchio must have been well acquainted with the history of the saint’s amicable arrangement of a deadly feud which had raged between the Buffalini and the fierce Baglioni of his native town, and both as a protégé of San Bernardino and as a Perugian, the commission to paint a chapel in honour of the saint and to commemorate the healing of the quarrel must have made a special appeal to his quick and sensitive fancy. The chapel was probably the gift of Lodovico Buffalini, advocate to the papal consistory, who, we find from an inscription on a stone in the pavement, died in 1506. The painting was for many years almost concealed by a hideous wooden hatchment, and only re-opened again in the last century, which accounts for the excellent preservation it is in.

The little Gothic chapel at the extreme west end of the church lighted by a small west window, has an arched roof with crossed pieces; the side walls are divided by painted pilasters. The whole architectural decoration is in monochrome, in pale brownish grey upon a rich brown ground. On the pilasters on either[49] side is a beautiful decoration of fruits and seed-pods in great masses, tied in with ribbons adapted from the antique, and resembling a framework by Mantegna in the Eremitani Chapel at Padua. The frescoes on the walls are separated by long slender candelabra with flaring flames, the stems formed of grotesques, masks grave and grimacing, climbing stags and gambolling putti. The arches of the roof have been profusely enriched with gold, and culminate in a blue and gold boss. Below the altar is a long procession, also in monochrome, captives and warriors, a soldier on horseback dragging a nude woman, others laden with spoils and torches, a conqueror on a triumphal car, with a naked captive bound behind; these are painted with almost impressionist touches, and the horses are much better drawn than we usually expect from Pintoricchio.

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.

On the west, on either side of the tall narrow window, are two simulated windows. From that nearest the altar the figure of “God the Father,” surrounded by cherubs and golden rays and holding a globe, looks into the chapel and towards the fresco below on the right. The panel to the right is filled by a long row of arches in side-long perspective, and on[50] the top of a pedestal straddles a charming little putto, reminding us of Mino da Fiesole’s children on monuments, who bears an axe and shield with the buffalo head, the crest of the Buffalini. In the background there is a trace of landscape seen through a ruined arch, and above, a lunette of the “Madonna and Child,” His foot rests on the heads of two cherubs. In the foreground kneels the small thin figure of “San Bernardino” receiving the monastic habit of the Franciscan order from a father, while his cast-off scarlet robes, his money and box of jewels, lie beside him on the ground. Following the line of the father’s gesture across the wall, we find that it is directed towards St. Francis, who kneels to receive the stigmata with an expression of deep devotion and spiritual insight that Pintoricchio has not often repeated. In the middle, under the window, two monks recount a history to three lay listeners, two of whom are evidently portraits, while a procession of horsemen rides across the background. Whether this relates to the miracle of the stigmata, or has some reference to the feud with the Baglioni, is uncertain.

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, [51]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.

In the fresco of “San Bernardino upon his Bier,” the radiating marbles of the great Piazza stretch away to a Bramante-like temple, arch soaring above arch; flanking the ancestral dwelling of the donor of the chapel, with the buffalo’s head carved above the doorway, and a quaint little scene of a buffalo assaulting the populace on the Piazza. In the foreground stands the bier, upon which, with outstretched feet and folded hands, lies the emaciated figure of the whilom gay young noble of Siena who left all to follow Christ. Round him gather the monks of the order, beggars, women and children. Down from the long loggia on the left, with the blue and gold decoration copied from Fiorenzo, comes the stately figure in cap and gown of Messer Avocato Lodovico Buffalini himself, face keen,[52] precise yet gentle, figure conscious of position, and the rustle of silken robes, observant too of the young sons, the youth and the boy, who also in robes and close caps upon flowing hair, stand on the opposite side of the bier. In the foreground Pintoricchio has broken the monotony of the rich dark green bier by two of his most charming little children with rounded limbs and gestures half saintly, half childish, while by them lies something stuck in as an afterthought, without meaning, without perspective, a babe in swaddling clothes in a sort of crib or basket. This is the miraculous bambino of Ara Cœli, the Byzantine doll preserved in the church, which could by no means be left out on such an occasion. The effect of ærial space about the whole composition is very remarkable. The people gather round, life beyond goes its way, and the whole is set in so peaceful and spirit-lifting an environment that it does not need the little sky episode of the saint received into glory to give it spirituality.

So, too, in the “Apotheosis of San Bernardino,” which occupies the altar wall, the sense of space and largeness is the prevailing quality. Overhead, the stiff mandorla with cherubic heads frames the Saviour, who, standing upon clouds, raises His hand in benediction. This figure, as usual, is not altogether happy in the rendering; but thin and awkwardly drawn as it is, it is not without force or dignity, and has something earnest and lovable in its expression. It is the direct simplicity of Pintoricchio’s manner which saves from self-consciousness, and gives a serious quality that atones for the want of grandeur. The[53] remaining figures leave hardly anything to be desired. Italian art can show us few more beautiful single figures than that of St. Louis of Toulouse.[21] The young bishop in his rich episcopal robes and mitre, his pastoral staff laid against his shoulder, while with absorbed earnest look he turns the pages of his great breviary, is one of the most satisfactory creations, full of dignity, goodness and thought, that any artist has shown us. The face is well and strongly modelled, and the outline is simple and large. Sant’ Antonio of Padua on the opposite side, holding his flaring heart in token of burning love, is a feebler figure, and reminds us of some of Perugino’s weaker saints; but San Bernardino himself, in the midst, is full of striking individuality, and there is great simplicity and repose in the outlines of all three figures. Nowhere have more beautiful angels been painted. Pintoricchio has shaken himself out of the conventional slavery of Perugino. These figures making music upon the clouds are full of life and vigour, reminiscent of Melozzo da Forli’s energetic inspiration, while the two who, bearing lilies, kneel and between them raise a golden crown above the saint’s head, are Pintoricchio’s own, instinct with his own fresh and delicate feeling for the beautiful, as lovely in colour as they are in form.

The grouping in the burial procession is more successful than usual, and the light and shade more massed. The colouring of all the frescoes is exceedingly harmonious, the greenish greys of the background are very delicate, and the foliage in the fresco over [54]the altar must have been most beautiful. Touches of bright colour are brought in sparingly, and with good effect. Nothing more satisfactory is to be found in the Umbrian school up to now, than the tout ensemble of the altar wall. The unity and balance of the whole, the variety, yet connection of the subject, the groundwork occupied, yet not crowded, free from spottiness and harsh transition. The palm tree filling the space on the right, the cypress on the left, the maintenance of the distances, relieve the fresco of all stiffness and flatness. The landscape is full of light and atmosphere. On the right we look away to a valley which has never lost the freshness of morning, on the left is a fairyland of sea and distant mountains and little far-away towns, gleaming, blue and mysteriously radiant. The whole shape and position of the country at the back is quite excellent, and in happy contrast to the artificial elegance of colonnades and radiating pavement of its neighbour on the adjoining wall.

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[55] CHAPTER IV

LIFE IN ROME—CONTINUED

GIULIANO DELLA ROVERE, though his uncle was dead, was still a powerful cardinal when Innocent VIII. succeeded in 1484. He inhabited the Colonna Palace, where Vasari tells us that both Perugino and Pintoricchio worked in his service. Nearly all the Umbrian decorations were swept away later to make room for the work of Poussin and Zuccaro, but the ceiling of one great hall still boasts the design of Pintoricchio. It is a rich and splendid piece of work. Ornaments in chiaroscuro on a blue or gold groundwork frame four little medallions of classic fable or sacred story—“Mucius Scævola” and “Virginia,” the “History of Judith” and of “David.” Hoary river-gods, grasping sheaves of corn and overflowing cornucopias of fruit, recline on the backs of sphinxes, on either side of fountains. More fanciful still are monkeys swinging from ribbons, centaurs prancing, putti riding goats which are led by older boys, fauns waving banners, owls, garlands and serpents, all set in a rich plastered and painted framework, finished with gold rosettes.

Service in the private palace of the cardinal led on to employment by Pope Innocent, to whom, no doubt, Giuliano recommended Pintoricchio for this class of[56] work, for in 1486 he was at work in the Belvedere. It was here that he painted the towns of which Taja speaks. “Not long after,” says Vasari, “about the year 1484, Innocent VIII., a Genoese, made him paint several halls and loggie in the Palace of the Belvedere, where, among other things which the Pope wished for, he painted a loggia all with towns, and you could discern Rome, Milan, Genoa, Florence, Venice and Naples, all in the Flemish manner, which, being no longer much in use, pleased very well.”[22] No trace of them remains, nor is anything left of the great Madonna picture which Vasari says was painted over the principal entrance. The only remains of Umbrian art are to be found on the walls and ceiling of what is to-day called the Museo Pio Clementino. A graceful loggia was half obliterated here to give more room to the sculpture gallery, but above, the arms of Innocent VIII. and the date 1487 are still visible, surrounded by garlands and ornaments resembling those in the Colonna Palace. Little medallions of classic subjects still struggle dimly through decay and ochre wash. In the archways, seven couples of putti hold the papal shield, or play on musical instruments, and we can trace the proud device of the Cibo, the gleaming peacock and the motto “Loyauté passe tout.”

In the two little rooms adjoining are prophets and philosophers, and here may be recognised the somewhat archaic assistant who helped Pintoricchio in the Borgia Tower. Only these poor scraps remain of the year’s service with the Cibo Pope, and hardly more of what he accomplished for his cardinals. [57]Domenico della Rovere, the cardinal of San Clemente, was one of Pintoricchio’s earliest patrons in Rome. He does indeed seem to have been as much friend as patron, and took both Perugino and Pintoricchio to lodge with him upon their first arrival in his spacious palace in the Piazza Scossacavalli, outside the entrance of which Pintoricchio painted a scutcheon supported by putti. The decoration of the interior of the palace then called Sant’ Apostoli was also entrusted to him. To-day it is inhabited by eleven brothers of the order of the Penitenzieri. It retains something of the fascination of a princely dwelling of the fourteenth century. In the mouldy courtyard are traces of almost obliterated paintings. Under the roof are heraldic devices, armorial bearings, sphinxes and dolphins. In the courtyard, orange trees grow round a well, which may have been the work of Bramante. Ivy half covers walls which were once gay with frescoes, but among the ruin and decay we see repeated countless times in the marble window frames, the name of the builder—DO. ROVERE, CAR. S. CLEMEN. and his pious device—SOLI DEO. Outside are faint traces of the shield of Sixtus IV. supported by two putti, the only part of the work which Vasari deigns to notice.

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[58] 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.”

This plan of small landscapes and scenes set in a wide framework of fantastic objects, classic and mythological, musical instruments, garlands and ribbons, becoming more and more grotesque, was peculiar at this time to Pintoricchio. He may have taken the idea from walls in old Roman houses, since destroyed, but of which many were uncovered at this period. The same sort of decoration is to be seen to-day in the Roman rooms on the Palatine. Pintoricchio uses[59] this mode of decoration again in the Borgia Apartments, and from him Raphael borrowed the idea for his loggie.

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.

The church was a favourite one with the Rovere family. Pope Sixtus himself often went to vespers there. In 1480 he instituted his nephew, Girolamo Riario, as chief warden. Here he came in state to give thanks after the victory of Campo Morto had delivered Rome from the fear of the Calabrian invader. Roderigo Borgia, too, as early as 1473, had given a marble altar to be placed in front of a miracle-working picture of the Madonna. Vasari speaks of two chapels painted by Pintoricchio in this church: one with the history of St. Jerome, for Domenico della Rovere, as a memorial of his brother, Christoforo, who died in 1479; the other for Cardinal Innocenzio Cibo. The Umbrian frescoes were destroyed, and the baroque ornamentation we now see, substituted. There is a third chapel, dedicated to Santa Catarina, in which the painter executed half-lengths of the four evangelists in an arched ceiling, for a Portuguese ecclesiastic, Cardinal Costa.

Finally, a fourth chapel had been the gift of Giovanni[60] Basso della Rovere, the brother-in-law of Pope Sixtus, whose portrait was already painted by Pintoricchio in the fresco of the Baptism in the Sixtine Chapel. Two of the half-lengths of the evangelists—“St. Jerome and Pope Gregory”—though both spoilt and repainted, remain as Pintoricchio’s work, together with two children supporting a scutcheon. In the chapel of St. Augustine, the three sons of Giovanni raised a monument to their father, and some years after his death (to judge by the introduction of grotesques) it was painted in frescoes, which guide-books still assign to Pintoricchio. They are in his manner, and were probably executed while he was working at the choir in 1505, for the papal shield of Julius II., who succeeded in 1503, appears on the ceiling. The “Pietà” in the lunette above the monument may possibly have been painted earlier than the rest of the chapel, and Schmarsow sees in it the hand of Pintoricchio, influenced by Melozzo da Forli. It is difficult to think that he can be answerable for it when we compare it with the “Pietà” over the polyptych at Perugia. The coarse, heavy body of the Christ, the badly-draped loin cloth, the clumsy attitude of the expressionless angels, seem rather to be the work of some pupil from North Italy, with a mingling of the Teutonic, and have nothing in common with the delicate and devotional Umbrian rendering, so evidently inspired by Perugino.

In the “Assumption,” which fills the opposite wall, the figures are too ill drawn to allow us to think they can be Pintoricchio’s. The arms are too short, the feet out of drawing, the figure of the Madonna is unnaturally long, with sloping shoulders. Crowe and[61] Cavalcaselle were the first to suggest as its author Matteo Balducci, a painter who has left several panels at Siena, which were for long assigned to Pintoricchio, under whom he worked in Rome. The “Virgin and Child, with Saints” over the altar is a very inferior work, entirely repainted. Round the top of the wall runs a series of scenes from the life of the Virgin. These have been attributed to the North Italian, Morto da Feltre. They are certainly not by Pintoricchio.

There remains, then, only the little chapel of St. Jerome, which, in spite of some restoration and some destruction, we can attribute to the master. It has the freshness of early work, and both in colouring and style is akin to that of San Bernardino in Ara Cœli, while the influence of Fiorenzo has re-asserted itself. Over the altar is the “Nativity,” which bears so close a resemblance to the older master’s “Adoration” at Perugia. In the finished sketch at Venice, for the tender figure of the Madonna, the drapery has the stair-like gradations of folds on both sides, which Morelli points out as characteristic of him, and the same critic draws attention to the type of hand, with long, bony fingers, that we find in his later Madonna dei Fossi. The landscape, which is soft and deep in tone, resembles that of the frescoes in the Sixtine Chapel. In two, at least, of the little series of the life of St. Jerome, we recognise Pintoricchio’s own hand. In one, the doctors of the Church come to visit the saint after he has retired to the desert. The study for the lion in this scene is in his sketch-book. On the other side of the chapel is the exquisite little panel in which St. Jerome argues a point of[62] doctrine with an infidel. This is a bit of genre-painting with all the charm the Umbrian painters understood so well. The red-robed saint sits in his great arm-chair; opposite him is placed a stately doctor in blue. Disciples are grouped on either hand, some have turbaned heads to suggest their unbelieving origin. Behind stand favourite dogs, and St. Jerome’s faithful lion. The scene is lit up by the painting of a little window in the centre, through which the company looks out on a sunny landscape, with trees and a lake lying in mellow light and floating evening shades. A rich cloth hangs across the broad sill. The idea of the little outlook, throwing air and contrast into the interior, is one often afterwards elaborated by Pintoricchio, and apparently was suggested to him by a panel in Fiorenzo’s miracles of San Bernardino.

In the Capitol is a fresco painting which Mr. Berenson ascribes to our master. Vasari speaks of his having painted such an altar-piece, but this, if the same, was entirely repainted in 1834. The colour of the angels’ robes was changed—one from red to yellow, the other from yellow to white. The Virgin’s robe, now blue, was originally green. The face is painted out of all recognition. The shape is not oval, the mouth is full with parted lips, and the hair falls on either side of the face. The angels, with knees bending outward, are not Pintoricchio’s type—only the Child recalls his Infant in the “Nativity” of Santa Maria del Popolo and the hands are like his in outline.

In the tribune of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme is a great composition of the “Finding of the True Cross,” which tradition has assigned to him among others[63] and which has strong traces of Umbrian workmanship. This is entirely and heavily repainted, and its artistic value is nil, except for the design. We should welcome even such an obscured reminiscence as this, if it remained to us, of the paintings in Castel Sant’ Angelo. On a blue, starred vault, the Saviour is surrounded by a mandorla of cherubs. Below, St. Helena stands, holding the cross, with the donor, Cardinal Carvajal, kneeling at her feet. On either side are the miracles attending its recovery. On the left, the Emperor Heraclius rides in triumph, bearing the cross, rescued from infidels, to the city gates. The groups of women on the extreme left, and some of those standing behind the Empress-saint, are full of likeness to Pintoricchio’s figures in the “Journey of Moses,” and the landscape (the only part which has not been quite repainted), with its purple tints, overhanging rocks, and parties of wayfarers, recalls the work of Fiorenzo. The whole has something of the direct simplicity of Pintoricchio’s narratives, but other figures remind us of Signorelli—the forms are heavy and lumpy, and it is probably only by a follower, though one who closely imitated the Umbrian master.

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[64] CHAPTER V

THE BORGIA APARTMENTS

THERE is perhaps hardly a place in Rome where you feel so transported into the heart of that old life of the Renaissance, as you do in the Borgia Apartments. After mid-day it is almost empty of sightseers; and in the long rooms, where the silence is only broken by the splash of the fountain in the quiet, grassy court outside, you realise the setting of the passionate lives that once ran their course here. Here the light caught Lucrezia’s golden hair, here the famous pontiff rustled in his brocaded robes, and Cæsar Borgia strode in gilded armour. Here great ambitions were matured, and blackest crimes consummated; and here, too, came and went the little, deaf, beauty-loving painter from the Umbrian hills, and drew his cartoons, and spaced his decorations, and overlooked his army of workmen, and left us as splendid a scheme of rich ornament as the quattro-cento has to show.

The preservation of these rooms is due to their having been for so long shut up. Pope Julius, moved partly by reprobation of the crimes of his predecessor, partly by hatred of the whole house of Borgia, refused to live in the apartments; but at the end of the sixteenth century the nephews of Leo XI. used them for a time. For two centuries they seem to have been uninhabited,[65] and the Abbé Taja in 1750 laments this abandonment, and deplores their loss to all lovers of the fine arts. Later, in the eighteenth century, we learn from Chattard[23] that they were used for the meals of cardinals and officials who assembled during Holy Week. In 1816, when, in consequence of the peace of Tolentino, the precious collection of pictures was sent back from Paris, some of them were collected in the Borgia apartments, and the marble cross-bars of the windows were replaced by iron ones to give more light. The light was, however, so bad that the pictures were removed, and a miscellaneous museum and library took their place.

In 1891 the present Pope, Leo XIII., moved the library, and the delicate task of restoration began. The book-shelves and marbles had cracked and destroyed the plaster in places, and in the time of Pius VII. some varnish had been applied to the ceilings, making a sort of crust. The restoration has been carried out with the greatest care under the direction of Signor Lodovico Seitz, and has fortunately been restricted to repairing the plaster and stucco, and to cleaning the frescoes from dust and damp. Though in some parts of the fifth and sixth halls the stucco has been taken off, the walls reconstructed, and the surface refixed, it has been done with such nicety that no mark is perceptible, and retouching, with one or two trifling exceptions, has been absolutely tabooed. What repainting there is dates from the time of Pius VII., but is fortunately slight. This applies to the actual paintings.

Most of the decorations of the lower walls have [66]been repainted, following the fragmentary traces that remained, or, where these were quite obliterated, they have been replaced with harmonious hangings. The minor decorations of the halls are a study in themselves, and are the more interesting as it is evident that the artist has superintended the whole, subordinating the marble work, the painting of the lower panels, and even the tiled floor to suit his scheme of colour.

It is extraordinary that no contract for these rooms has been discovered. No sign of the agreement for them remains in Alexander Borgia’s account book. It is only from incidental mention in letters to and from Orvieto, and from payments made, that we can find out when the work was begun, and how long it lasted.

Messrs. Ehrle and Stevenson, in their monumental work on the Borgia Apartments, show very clearly that Pintoricchio’s part only began with the second room. The private or living rooms of the Pope at that time were the second, or the Hall of Mysteries; the third, the Hall of Saints; and the fourth, or Arts and Sciences, besides the two withdrawing rooms. Vasari knew this quite well at the end of the sixteenth century. It is only with Chattard, about 1764, that the whole of the six rooms were said to have been decorated for Alexander VIII. In Vasari’s life of Pintoricchio, he says the Pope made him paint the rooms he inhabited, and the Borgia Tower; and, more clearly still, in the life of Perino del Vaga, he says the latter was painting the vault of the Sala Pontifici, by which you enter the rooms of Pope Alexander, [67]already painted by Pintoricchio. Taking off this room, there remain five, to which he assigned three years.

Our knowledge of contracts of the time enable us to construct pretty accurately what must have been the conditions of the missing agreement. The master would have been required to use the best colours, to begin and end within certain time limits, to design all the cartoons, and to paint the faces and principal parts with his own hand. We can gather from the existing work that Pintoricchio performed his share of such a contract honestly; assistants were evidently and inevitably employed, but the homogeneous character of the whole is remarkable, and proves, not only that the painter’s supervision must have been incessant, but also that he had the power of directing and overseeing his pupils’ work, so as to keep their individuality in sufficient abeyance to his own guiding influence. That he had by this time his own workshop of helpers and skilled painters working under him we do not doubt, but I do not think that any critics who have studied the consistent character of the work, now doubt that he had the supreme direction, and that he was undisturbed by rivals. The unity of ornament, too, leads us to believe that he directed and designed all this part himself. Probably the marble work is by Andrea Bregno, who had been working with him in the Sixtine Chapel, and Santa Maria del Popolo.

Something of the beauty which greets us in these halls we owe to the mellowing hand of time; yet even when new, the effect must have been rich and glowing, brilliant and deep rather than gaudy, and all is planned to suit the subdued light of a northern aspect. The[68] square, not very high rooms are spaced, divided, and slightly vaulted with the most consummate skill. The rich soft colours, the heavy gold, the airy outlook of landscape, the glowing background, give an effect, choice, jewelled, of an exquisite finish, of a sensuous gratification, almost without parallel. The imagination furnishes the empty chambers with all the choice objects they once contained. The priceless majolica, the gold and silver vessels, the brocaded hangings, the ivory carvings—what a background for the scenes of love and revelry once enacted here! The thrum of music, the laughter and wit and boisterous merriment, the muttered conferences, the whispered plotting, the ghastly treacheries, the dying groans. In one of these rooms, the Hall of Arts, the first husband of the young Lucrezia was murdered. In the adjoining room the Pope himself died in agonies. On these and on what other deeds of darkness and despair and triumphant villainy have these chaste and innocent conceptions of Pintoricchio looked down. It gives them a curious attraction, born of incongruity; as a writer says: “They have all the fascination of ‘fleurs du mal.’”

It was about this time that the grotesque first crept into art. Dr. Schmarsow thinks that the earliest signs may be detected in the Borgia Apartments. The early art of the Renaissance had shown a preference for the classic, inspired by the decorations on antique marbles. The objects were clear and simple, human beings, animals, keeping true to nature, ornamented with garlands, ribbons, and other accessories, fanciful, but not fantastic. The origin of the expression “grottesque,” which is first used in Pintoricchio’s contract in Siena [69]in 1502, is explained by Benvenuto Cellini in 1571. It was taken from the objects found by students of art who explored antique monuments in caverns or grottoes. Paintings, ornamented with grotesques, were crowded with objects all complicated, twisted and adapted, masks, swans with abnormally long necks, fabulous monsters, unnatural flowers. Exuberantly as Pintoricchio afterwards uses such objects, the tendency is only seen slightly here and in the Buffalini chapel. His work in the first hall (the Hall of Mysteries) of the life of our Lord, has something of a mediæval tendency. The scenes are seven in number: “The Annunciation,” “The Nativity,” “The Adoration of the Magi,” “The Resurrection,” “The Ascension,” “The Descent of the Holy Spirit,” and “The Assumption of the Virgin.” The composition of all is of the simplest, no strong emotions are rendered, and the figures are all of that peaceful and primitive devotion suited to the ruling of the early Church, and recalling Fiorenzo and Bonfigli. Indeed, the contrast is great between the simplicity of ornament and more ambitious, scientific spirit in the Sixtine, and the return here to the conventional composition and the mediæval fondness for accessory. Both “The Annunciation” and “The Adoration of the Magi” are of the Umbro-Perugian type. Pintoricchio repeats the angel of the first scene again at Spello, with several other figures. In the radial lines of the pavement we recognise the example of Perugino in the Sixtine fresco. The whole scene in the stately halls opening out in a beautiful landscape, is full of soft dignity. The rose-pink of the angels’ robes, the[70] peacock-blues and greens of Mary’s garments, the rose-wreath, the lilies, make a luscious combination of colour. It is the impassionate character, the childlike and unconscious spirit of all Pintoricchio’s creations that gives them such a piquancy, in contrast to their splendid setting.

Dr. Auguste Schmarsow, of all the critics, is the one who has given most careful study to these frescoes and has brought most knowledge and erudition to bear upon them. He divides a great deal of the execution among the various schools to which he thinks Pintoricchio’s assistants belonged, and his assignments, if not to be taken as actual facts, are worth considering—it being allowed that the whole is due to one designer. All critics concur in giving the figures in the “Annunciation” to the master. In the next, the “Nativity,” the Virgin and Child are also from Pintoricchio’s own hand, and many details recall the altar-piece in Santa Maria del Popolo. The “Adoration of the Magi” is attributed to a Lombard, except the boy at the right, who is by a pupil of Botticelli. We should be sorry to hold Pintoricchio immediately responsible for the ill-drawn Child and awkward hands in this fresco; and in the patterns on the dresses and the terra-cotta mouldings of the buildings we see the Lombard taste. In the “Resurrection” we have the broken tomb, the risen Saviour, and the guards in armour, set in a landscape of rocky ground and cypresses.

The principal figure, upon a gilded glory, set round with cherubs’ heads and tongues of flame and grasping a banner, is far too ill-drawn for the master, and [71]Schmarsow gives it entirely to a Lombard. The guards are all of a refined Umbrian type, full of spirit and intelligence, and Dr. Steinmann suggests that we may have here portraits of Cæsar Borgia and his brother, who at the time would be boys of seventeen and eighteen. It is, as he argues, difficult to say what other portraits (and that they are portraits is evident) would be allowed in the same scene with that of the donor, Pope Alexander himself, who kneels on the left hand, the most conspicuous figure of the whole group, clothed in a gorgeous mantle, embossed with gold, his hands raised in prayer. His face has a strong beaked nose, low forehead, heavy jowl, double chin and crafty eye, and the tonsure shows the unusual development of the back of the skull. It is a splendidly realistic portrait, full of strength and truth, and clever modelling of the heavy fleshy face. This is entirely by Pintoricchio, who naturally would not leave such an important detail to any inferior hand. It is in unconscious satire that the Pope raises his clasped hands and eyes to the figure of the risen Lord, and that the inscription is to be read—like a sentence from the Judgment Seat—“I wait for my resurrection.” These figures, in contrast to some of the puppet-like ones in the two preceding frescoes, are full of life, vivid and solid. In “The Ascension,” painted on the archway over the window, the figure of Christ is the same in attitude if not in drapery. The whole is feebly drawn, and the gestures of the Apostles show a great want of unity. In this composition Schmarsow sees an imitation of Melozzo da Forli, while the heads and drapery are of the school[72] of the Sienese, Bernardino Fungai, and by the same hand as the prophets on the roof nearest the window.

The “Descent of the Holy Spirit” has suffered more than any of the frescoes from damp and restoration. The scene is placed in an open field—an arbitrary action of the painter intended to give unity to the background by making it a landscape like the other spaces, in Pintoricchio’s special manner. The usual harmony of design is lacking here, and the lower part of the scene is out of harmony with the upper. We trace the Lombard style again, particularly on the left hand, while some figures on the right recall the Sienese. The two inner figures of prophets on the vault are in the style of Fiorenzo. It is not likely that Pintoricchio would himself have worked at these, but Perugian pupils were certainly working with him.

In the remaining fresco of the “Assumption,” the composition is entirely Umbrian, and may be compared with that in Santa Maria del Popolo, and in the Vatican. In St. Thomas, and in the angels on the right, Schmarsow sees the style of Perugino, but that master was a protégé of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, and at this time was busied on work for his patron; in any case, he would not have been likely to take service under his old pupil. Of course, Pintoricchio must have had designs by him in his possession. The Madonna in some degree recalls the much more beautiful one Pintoricchio afterwards painted for the monks of Monte Oliveto. But the figure which gives its artistic importance to the fresco is that of the man in black who kneels on the right of the open tomb, [73]facing St. Thomas. This figure alone, in grandeur and simplicity of attitude, in intensity of expression, in fine drawing and handling, and in depth of colour, would vindicate Pintoricchio’s claim to be called a great painter—taken in conjunction with the Pope on the opposite wall, it carries conviction of the power and the insight of the man who could produce two such diverse and striking types, though the art that produced them may be empirical rather than scientific. We do not know who this last may be. There are no signs of his rank in his dress, no cardinal’s hat by his side; but it is evident that he must have been a person of importance. It is conjectured that he is Francesco Borgia, the Pope’s brother, who, in 1493 became Bishop of Teano, and Papal treasurer.[24]

A wonderful softness broods over the whole decoration of this room; the details, elaborate as they are, are subordinated to a quiet and restful effect. All absence of violent action or emotion contributes to the impression; the same peaceful types are repeated; the same character of landscape: all modifies the pictorial to the decorative effect. We may notice here a feature which Pintoricchio shares very strikingly with Perugino—it is that feeling for restraint, the instinct to keep all of small size and well within the picture which gives these painters such a peculiarly refined character, especially in contrast with those who followed, copyists of Raphael and Michael Angelo. Everywhere in the decorative part of the rooms we see the bull’s head, the appropriate device of the savage representative of the House of Borgia, [74]a device which the House—which was of Spanish extraction—had borne since the thirteenth century. The decoration is repeated over and over again, and does not show much resource or ingenuity, but the subdued tone of the whole is very happy and thoroughly appropriate.

A marble doorway surrounded by two putti bearing a shield, leads to the Hall of Saints. Here Pintoricchio has surpassed himself in beauty. Here is more varied and more lively action and better effects of grouping than we find anywhere in his work, except in the Sixtine Chapel. When these apartments were little known, the Libreria at Siena was often quoted as the achievement on which the Umbrian master’s fame rested, but to know him at his best we must see him here in Rome. For technique, colour, decoration, and poetical feeling, these rooms, and especially the Hall of Saints, rank higher than anything else he has left, with the exception, perhaps, of the Buffalini and Sixtine Chapels.

The legends of the saints are varied by a scene from the Old and one from the New Testament. It does not appear what was the reason of this conjunction.

Over the door we have “Susanna and the Elders.” The middle of the composition is occupied by a splendid fountain in the style of the Renaissance. The top part, with the child holding the dolphin, resembles Verrocchio’s work in the courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. The fountain is placed in a little garden plot set round with palings and a rose hedge, and the fanciful hand which painted it [75]has filled it with animals: a hare, a stag lying down by the shoes which Susanna has just slipped off, a fawn, white rabbits gambolling in all directions, a monkey attached to a golden chain. These are evidently painted by a real student-lover of animals. In front of the fountain stands the saint, in a clinging white robe that reminds us of the sculpture of Agostino di Duccio; her feet are bare; a heavy necklace and pendant are round her throat. The two elders, in rich robes and Eastern turbans, grasp her arms on either side; but her attitude, with her hand on the shoulder of one, is free from violent emotion, calm and trustful. Pintoricchio has seldom painted a more exquisite and poetical figure than this, with fair head and delicately-modelled arms and hands. Its purity and innocence, and the subject of the legend, make it a strange choice for the private apartments of a Borgia.

In the background on the left, the same white figure is being hurried to execution by guards in the dress of the fifteenth century, while Daniel, mounted on a white horse and holding a sceptre, intervenes in her favour. On the other side, the elders, bound to a tree, are stoned to death, even a little figure of a child casting stones at them. These figures show a great deal of animated action and good drawing and modelling, and are full of life and spirit. Behind is a landscape in the well-known style of Pintoricchio—the whole strongly recalling the work of Fiorenzo. Bernardino here is in his most idyllic and fairy-tale vein, and nowhere is the painting more finished; but the very great care of detail, carried into the most[76] distant part, gives too great an importance to accessories, and damages the unity of the whole, showing him less as a great composer than a decorator.

In the next fresco, Santa Barbara escapes from the tower in which she had been imprisoned by her cruel father, and in which she had built three windows in honour of the Trinity. On the left of the tower we see the great rent made by a miracle, through which she escaped. The father, armed with a scimitar, and shielding his eyes with his hand, is anxiously searching for her in the wrong direction. He is accompanied by two armed followers, one of whom catches sight of her, and, suddenly converted, looks longingly after her. In the background the saint escapes in company with Santa Giulia, and on the right her father is asking for news from a shepherd, who, for betraying that he has seen her, is turned into a marble pillar and painted white to convey this idea. Santa Barbara herself is a naïve and charming figure, gracefully posed, with flying draperies and long fair hair circled with pearls. Her streaming locks and blowing draperies give the impression of flight and movement very successfully. The whole effect is gay and fanciful. The saint, her little fair face turned up, her hands clasped, might be a fairy princess, escaping from an enchanted castle, over a sward carpeted with blossoms. She makes a bright figure in effective contrast to the white-robed Susanna.

The lunette opposite this is one of the happiest of the series—“The Visit of St. Anthony to Paul the Hermit.” Beneath a rough natural stone archway in [77]which the hermitage is concealed, its presence indicated by the bell which the hermit uses to call himself to prayers, the two saints sit, sharing the loaf of bread which has been brought by the faithful raven, which flies away on the left. Close to St. Paul two disciples in white robes contemplate the edifying conversation, behind St. Anthony are grouped three women, richly dressed. They advance with half-closed, wanton eyes, and by the little horns on their fashionably dressed hair, their bats’ wings, and the claws peeping out from under their flowing skirts, their demoniacal character is betrayed. The last of the group, with head thrown back and hands resting on either side of her waist, is a very original and beautiful figure. The face and hands of St. Anthony are strongly drawn and the robes finely draped. In the hermit, dressed in the legendary garment of palm leaves, and in the very inferior figures of disciples, the hand of an assistant may be seen. The latter recall Signorelli, without his force and freshness.

In “The Visitation,” which fills the remaining space on this side, we have one of those sweet, home-like narrative paintings so dear to Umbrian art. The Virgin and St. Elizabeth, dressed in the long conventional blue and green draperies, clasp hands in the foreground, the Virgin with downcast eyes, the saint with the searching gaze prescribed by tradition. Behind them, St. Joseph leans on a staff, and a procession of children and pages follows: a girl with graceful swathings of scarf and sleeve carries a basket of fruit upon her head, and with a child at her feet, is distantly reminiscent of certain figures by Botticelli in the[78] Sixtine Chapel. The smiling landscape, across which the visitors have journeyed, is seen through a perspective of elaborately drawn and decorated arches, on which some of those drawings of grotesque ornamentation can be discerned. On the right, in the shadows of the arcades, is a delightful group, one of those bits with which Pintoricchio gives interest and charm to his compositions. Zacharias, who is as yet unaware of the arrival, leans in an angle, absorbed in a book. On the ground a group of women, young and old, are occupied in spinning and embroidery; at the back another graceful figure twirls a distaff, and a child plays with a dog on the ground in front. In some of the secondary parts of the execution of this, Schmarsow sees the hand of Pintoricchio’s best scholar. The architecture has nothing of the Umbrian style, but shows the hand of one to whom the Lombard decoration, with its terra-cotta work, is familiar. The whole of the fresco is more broadly painted, the draperies in large, broad folds, the value of the landscape better kept, more softly modulated than in any we have yet noticed.

The light over the windows is so bad that it is almost impossible to get an adequate view of the frescoes placed there. This is particularly unfortunate in the Hall of Saints, for no one of the scenes is more beautiful, more happily grouped or more full of interest than the one of St. Sebastian’s martyrdom. The young Saint who, transfixed with arrows and bound with cords, stands at the base of a column placed against a mass of ruined brickwork on Mount Palatine, is a pathetic figure, full of calm dignity and [79]resignation. It is drawn and modelled with care and freedom, and has a force and solidity which make us regret that Pintoricchio did not give himself more chance by oftener painting studies from the nude. The figure and drapery with some modifications seem to have been adapted from his fresco of the “Baptism of Christ,” but he has learnt more since then, and it stands firmer and gives a greater sense of elasticity and poise. The groups of archers on either hand, shooting at their human mark, under the superintendence of a Janissary in Eastern dress,[25] are full of movement and variety. One draws his bow, another is putting the arrow in the string, another has just let fly, while behind him a fourth in half armour shades his eyes with his hand and watches the weapon speed to the mark—a quaint, matter-of-fact rendering of a scene of tragedy, which deprives it of its serious character and gives it, as Steinmann remarks, a social air, as of a friendly shooting match.

The scene in which the event takes place is more interestingly painted in some ways than any of the other landscapes. It is easy to see that studies for it have been made upon the Palatine itself, where tradition has always held that Sebastian, who was a captain of the Roman Guard, met his martyrdom. The small old Roman brickwork, overgrown with exquisitely drawn acanthus and ivy, is rendered with detailed care, and broken columns stand or lie around. In the background we see the half-ruined Colosseum, as Sixtus IV. left it when he built the [80]Sixtine Bridge from its blocks. On the right is a church—it may be San Giovanni e Paolo, or the one raised in honour of the saint himself. Nowhere up to this time has the beauty and the melancholy of the Roman landscape been rendered by any artist, and once more we feel how deeply beauty in all its forms appealed to the Umbrian painter.

We now turn to the principal wall, facing the window, the most splendid of all the frescoes which Pintoricchio has left. At the foot of the great arch of Constantine, which is crowned with a golden bull, St. Catherine of Alexandria holds a theological dispute with fifty philosophers at a council convoked by the Emperor Maximian. The only woman in the great assemblage, the fair little figure stands before the throne of the Emperor and illustrates the points of her arguments upon her fingers. The same model has served here as for Santa Barbara—tradition says it was Lucrezia herself, the dearly-loved daughter of the Pope—with the small delicate features and long fair hair, which she is described by Burckhardt as possessing. The scene is laid in the usual sunny landscape. Old men with high caps and turbans dispute together, potentates ride upon the scene, pages attend their masters, bearing their volumes for reference, a greyhound steals forward at the feet of a squire who bears a halberd on his shoulder. Some are hastily searching their books as if short of arguments, but the king’s daughter is speaking on without hesitation, as if inspired by an unerring director. Lucrezia was fifteen the year this was painted, and was given in marriage to Giovanni Sforza. Full of wit and charm [81]as she was, the painter may have caught the idea of his composition from seeing her foremost in lively discussion among the nobles of her father’s court, but the figure and gesture is practically copied from Masolino’s of the same subject in San Clemente. All the evil Lucrezia witnessed, all the black deeds she took part in, if history says truly, seem to have swept over that fair head, and when she settled down at Pesaro with her third husband, we gather that she was glad to leave intrigue and crime behind and to lead a comparatively peaceable, respectable existence for the rest of her life.

The idea of the splendour of the Pope’s court has fascinated the painter, and round the beautiful girl, who was its centre, he has grouped other remarkable personages who must have struck him there. The sad-eyed, bitter-looking man in Greek dress, who stands on the left in the foreground, is said to be Andrea Paleologos, commonly called the Despot of Morea, nephew and heir of the unfortunate Emperor Constantine, under whose rule Constantinople fell into the hands of the Turks. Andrea had with his father, taken refuge at the Papal court some twenty years earlier; they had brought with them a precious gift—the bones of St. Andrew—and the hospitality of successive Popes had been extended to them. Andrea could never forget his former grandeur or reconcile himself to his position, though, as he made profit out of his hereditary rights in many petty ways, he was held in little repute. Certainly the resentful, brooding expression, the isolated air, accords well with the descriptions of the disappointed, disinherited man, standing silent and moody while the gay court of the[82] Renaissance is unheeding of him. This interesting attribution is now questioned by some authorities.

In the British Museum are drawings of a Turk and a Turkish woman, both seated cross-legged. The drawing of the man serves for the Janissary in the “Martyrdom of St. Sebastian,” reversed, and the arm slightly altered.

At Frankfort is a drawing of an Albanian, and also the one from which the alleged portrait of the Despot of Morea is taken.

In the Louvre are two drawings of Turks and one of a Turkish woman. Here we find the Turk standing on the Emperor’s left hand, and supposed to be the Sultan Djem.

All these drawings appear to be by the same hand and done at the same time—alike in size and style. The two in the British Museum have been ascribed to Gentile Bellini, and are believed to have been sketches made by him in Constantinople. They have all the appearance of being from life. There are touches of reality in the under-robe of the Turk, the wrinkles in his face and the muscles of the neck, which entirely disappear when the sketch is transferred to the plaster wall. The question then arises, Did Pintoricchio transfer drawings by Bellini straight into his fresco, or can we entertain the opinion advanced by Signor A. Venturi, that the drawings are not by Bellini at all, but by Pintoricchio himself?[26]

The Sultan Djem no doubt had a suite which included women, and Pintoricchio would have had no difficulty in finding models. We can hardly doubt, apart from [83]tradition, that the painter did intend the very prominent Greek in his fresco to represent Paleologos, who would so obviously balance the other distinguished refugee at the opposite corner; but if so, why copy an old drawing of thirteen years earlier, when it was essential to secure a portrait, and when Paleologos himself was always about the court? The same remark holds good of the drawing of the Turks. With so many Turks in Rome in 1493, and all the town wild about them, is it probable that Pintoricchio should have had recourse for them to old drawings by Bellini? On the other hand, the style of the drawings has no resemblance whatever to that of Pintoricchio, though I cannot see much more to Gentile Bellini. I am inclined to think that the attribution to this last is an arbitrary one, and arises from his having been known to have visited the East, but that the drawings were supplied to Pintoricchio by a third person unknown, probably one of his assistants, whom he commissioned to procure sketches.

The figure on the Emperor’s left, in Turkish dress, has usually been taken for Prince Djem, the younger son of the Sultan Mahommed II., but as it is on record that Djem closely resembled his father, and as we have an excellent likeness of the latter in Gentile Bellini’s famous portrait (now in Lady Layard’s possession), we are able to identify Djem in the much more striking personage, the fierce and stately prince on horseback on the extreme right. It was as a hostage that Innocent VIII. brought him to Rome in 1489. We have plenty of evidence of how “el Gran Turco” struck the fancy of the Romans. All the[84] Chronicles of the time, the letters and diaries of Ambassadors, are full of descriptions of his dress and person, and of the gay hunting parties which the Pope used to give in his honour. Mantegna has left a graphic description of his appearance in a letter written from Rome in 1485, in which he speaks of his fierce aspect, his wonderful seat on a horse, and his turban made of “thirty thousand ells of fine linen.”

We can guess that the Turks made a great impression on Pintoricchio, for he brings them in again to his frescoes fifteen years later at Siena. The Emperor has been said to be a portrait of Cæsar Borgia; but as he was only eighteen or nineteen at the time, this seems impossible. The young man on horseback on the right, tradition names as Giovanni Sforza, who was about twenty.

Here, too, is another portrait, less splendid but as notable as any. In the corner on our left may be seen the slim form and thin dark face, sensitive and observant, of the little painter himself, and by his side a man with a shrewd, firm face, with a grand gold chain round his shoulders and holding an architect’s square in his hand. This is no doubt one of the sculptors or decorators of the rooms. It may be Bramante, or the elder San Gallo, or Andrea Bregno, that conjuror in marble.

The ceiling in this room is a marvel of richly-gilt and embossed stucco, mingled with painting. The eight large triangular spaces between the bars of framework illustrate the myth of Osiris and Isis which, with its history of the deification of the bull, appropriately symbolises the exaltation of the House of[85] Borgia. The young King Osiris, having conquered Egypt, ploughs the land with bulls and teaches the Egyptian to plant orchards and vineyards. The peace and prosperity of his rule is crowned by his marriage with Isis. Warriors pile their useless armour and children play around their knees. In this segment one particularly delightful putto is riding astride of a swan, the original for which, in marble, had been among the recent discoveries of antiques. As the history proceeds, the wicked brother raises the Egyptians in mutiny and Isis finds the remains of her murdered husband. Isis is a graceful fantastic figure, with swathing draperies, and the cut-up hands and legs of the unfortunate Osiris are disposed about the ground with a very naïve effect. Then we have his burial, wrapped in cloth of gold—the pyramid erected to him, and his apparition deified in the form of the famous bull Apis, ending with a procession and the bull borne in triumph. The intervals are lavishly filled in with grotesques, which are here very marked in character. It is curious to note Pintoricchio’s study of the antique, the classic armour, and the mythical histories in the small tondi on the wide cross architrave—Mercury soothing Argus to sleep, and then slaying him at Jove’s command. Jove seizing Io, and obtaining possession of the cow into which her friend was transformed. The design of the principal subjects is in Pintoricchio’s style and full of fancy and invention, but the execution would seem to have been entrusted to assistants, apparently to the same hand which worked on the archers round St. Sebastian and in parts of the Susanna.

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[86] CHAPTER VI

THE BORGIA APARTMENTS—CASTEL SANT’ ANGELO

AS he passed through the doorway which leads into the Hall of the Arts and Sciences, Pintoricchio found above his head a narrow space to decorate, and his thoughts must have flown back to the over-door of the old Council chamber in Perugia and the fresco which years before he had watched his whilom master, Fiorenzo, place there, and perhaps had helped him to execute. Some sketch of that group must have been beside him, for we have it reproduced in this “Madonna and Child.” The dress and attitude of the Mother are almost identical, though the original is refined upon, and in technique and beauty of expression this is one of the most satisfactory of all his works. The Mother, holding an open book, in which the Child reads, is reminiscent of that earlier painting sent to Xativà, but Mary, gazing out of the picture with wide eyes full of light, and delicate, half-satirical mouth, has the individuality of a portrait. The Child is a very real little boy; He stands on a cushion, dressed in a little tunic, poring with pretty baby wisdom over His task, so natural and so busy, He adds one more to a long list of triumphs in a branch of art in which up to this time Pintoricchio had few rivals. This picture started Vasari on a fable that it was a portrait of Giulia Farnese and [87]her child, with the Pope kneeling as donor, but there is no trace of a third person. He may have confused it with the Xativà panel.

In this room Pintoricchio bestows great attention upon the children, in the painting of which some of his greatest successes were scored. Earlier masters had neglected this feature of art—very few up to this time had given us any real idea of childish beauty. We have, to be sure, the sweet little creations of Fra Angelico, and some beautiful children of Filippino Lippi, Botticelli, and Ghirlandaio, but the art of using lovely putti with a half-decorative effect in painting belonged chiefly to North Italy, and was perfected by Carpaccio, Alvise Vivarini, and Giovanni Bellini. Indeed, when we look at some of the examples in these rooms of children supporting armorial bearings and drawing back heavy curtains, we are reminded of the very same motif in a group painted by Mantegna, thirty years earlier in the Chapel at Padua, where children stand on each side of a shield, and we recollect that that master was shortly before this in Rome. Whether Pintoricchio was indebted to Mantegna for a design or not, in himself he was a true child-lover, far superior in this respect to Perugino, whose fat, smug infants are sometimes quite repellent. He painted no inspired, supernatural beings, but round, healthy babies, full of roguish charm.

The whole ceiling in this room is soft and restful in character, the pattern is mechanical, but the form and spacing of the great octagon and the ingenuity of the divisions of the architraves complete a thoroughly harmonious effect. The Borgia crest re-appears with[88] inevitable monotony. The coat-of-arms shines from the centre of radiating sun rays, and upon a dark blue ground. At either end of the vault great white bulls approach an altar, where they are received by charming putti with trumpet blasts of triumph. The whole is so blended and subdued that though each detail is full of the beauty of nature, it is yet perfect, looked at as mere decoration.

In the Spanish Chapel in Florence (which Pintoricchio had never, as far as we know, seen), in the Castles of Urbino and Bracciano, among other places, from Giotto down to the followers of Raphael, the arts and sciences had been a favourite theme treated by his forerunners. Here they have some slight resemblance to the series painted under the superintendence of Melozzo for the Duke of Montefeltro, two of which are now in the National Gallery. They are like enough to make us think that Pintoricchio had seen them or had their description, and in accepting and enlarging on the suggestion, he has in this room achieved a remarkable series.

In the preceding chambers his task has been one of comparatively little difficulty. The well-known sacred histories asked no great flight of fancy, originality was unnecessary and they were naturally rich in incident and detail. The scenes from the lives of the saints lend themselves easily to dramatic effect and allow of every sort of accessory. But in this room, which Steinmann suggests was Pope Alexander’s study, each of the seven spaces has for its prevailing object of interest the single figure of a woman, and relief from monotony depends upon the appropriate figures [89]grouped around. Each of the emblematical forms sits upon a throne, with a stiff, architectural back,[27] from several of which winged putti are drawing back heavy curtains, and about the steps are gathered philosophers and disciples of the art or science. Beyond, a softly-tinted landscape is detached against a blue and gold embossed firmament. Over the whole broods an idyllic peace. Calm, serene beings are absorbed in culture and the pursuit of knowledge, contemplative and thoughtful, almost as far removed as the saints from the worldly plotting and fierce intrigues which are carried on under their unimpassioned eyes. Unfortunately this beautiful hall has suffered more than any other, and several of the frescoes are almost destroyed by damp and restoration.

“Rhetoric” holds a sword to show the power with which she is able to pierce hearts, and a globe, perhaps to suggest the far-reaching extent of that power. These emblems are repeated in the hands of the putti on either side of the steps. On the right of the throne a priest, perhaps a portrait, though not a highly individual one, holds a purse; an old philosopher reading on the left may be meant for Cicero, who would not be left out of such a composition, while grey-bearded teachers argue with richly-dressed young disciples. On the steps is the name “PENTORICCHIO,” but except the principal figure, the work was probably divided among scholars. In Rhetoric herself, and in the old man on the left, in the folds of the mantles, and in the attendant putti there is some likeness to Perugino, but this master was fully employed at the end of 1492 by Giuliano [90]della Rovere, and would have been most unlikely to take service with Giuliano’s hated rival, even if he would have consented to work in a subordinate character. Pintoricchio’s sketch-books must have been full of studies from him, and in beginning a new essay he would probably have had recourse to these, trusting more as he went on to his own initiative.

“Geometry” holds her square and compasses, and the inventor, the bald-headed Euclid, sits at her feet, engaged in drawing a diagram. On the left, in the corner, is a youth who has evidently painted his own portrait in a looking-glass. The cloak of “Geometry” and the red dress of Euclid show the hand of a pupil of Fiorenzo, but none of the attendant figures nor the landscape have much trace of Pintoricchio’s own work, though Schmarsow allots to him besides the figure of “Geometry,” the turbaned man on her right, the youth standing by him, and the one at the edge of the group. None of the seven sisters is so beautiful as “Arithmetic.” Here Pintoricchio trusts in his own inspiration, and we have a finely-drawn head with all his freshness of pose and expression. This dreamy face, with its transparent veil half covering the flowing hair, the gold embossed robe, over-sleeves, mantle hanging in very softly accentuated folds, and the beautifully proportioned figures standing by, have a larger share than almost any other of the lunettes of the master’s hand, and here, more than in any, we have the many coloured garments, rich pinks, harmonious greens, that Pintoricchio loved. The light and shade in this and the preceding group is massed with an eye to effect which is quite absent from the rest.

“Music” is in some respects the most beautiful group [91]of all, though the principal figure can hardly compare with that of “Arithmetic.” This again is strongly reminiscent of Perugino. With drooped eyelids the symbolic sister daintily plays a violin; of four beautiful putti, two hold back the splendid dark green curtain, and two play the flute at “Music’s” feet. Two old men are grouped together with Tubal Cain, who, as in the Spanish Chapel, forges musical instruments and keeps time with his swinging hammer. On the left is a charming group of boys—one playing the harp, another singing, a third, in rich dark robe and a student’s cap upon his square out-flowing locks, touches a lute. In the spontaneity and unity that runs through all these figures, the suggestion of music and the sense of pleasure in it is rendered as in few other paintings of the Renaissance. We almost hear the strain, soft, fresh, heart-stirring, given without exaggeration or self-consciousness, to which the little putti above seem to lean and listen, and we feel little doubt that this, the most lovingly painted, the most homogeneous of all the scenes, was painted entirely, or almost entirely, by Pintoricchio himself.

“Astrology” is the most damaged of any. The principal figure, which has been badly restored, must at any time have been entirely unworthy of the Umbrian master. The four putti, holding wands tipped with heavenly bodies, are much heavier and less dainty than his children. The groups at the sides, in one of which is a figure intended for Ptolemy, have no connection with the presiding patroness. That on the left, which is far the best, has, however, some admirable figures, Umbrian in character, and due to a pupil of Pintoricchio, who was thoroughly imbued with his[92] master’s spirit, and probably working straight from his sketches—indeed, a careful comparison of the hair and drapery of the youth who stands foremost, with extended arm, and holds an astral globe in the other hand, and the kneeling saint in the “Assumption,” of the Hall of Mysteries, may persuade us that Pintoricchio is himself responsible for this delightful figure.

The figures of “Grammar” and “Dialectics” in the following scenes are so much retouched that we can hardly tell what they were like originally, but we may feel almost certain that no part of them is by Pintoricchio. The architecture of the thrones differs too. We surmise that this room, the last of the series actually occupied by the Pope, was finished hurriedly, and that this accounts for the very marked falling off in the quality of the work of the last three scenes. The arch and the five octagons here are entirely repainted; they refer to the virtue of “Justice,” who holds the sword and balance. The others are sacred or legendary scenes. The period of their wholesale restoration can be judged by a dragon at the side of the central octagon, which we take to be the crest of Buoncompagni, and therefore of the time of Gregory XIII.

The most beautiful decorative figures in the entire range of rooms are the three full-length angels who support the Borgia scutcheon surmounted by the keys and tiara, set in a stucco frame between “Rhetoric” and “Geometry.” In freedom of gesture, grace of flying drapery, and excellence of drawing, they must be ascribed to Pintoricchio himself, and may be compared with those he has executed in the Buffalini Chapel.

The two following halls, which were those by which persons who had had audience of the Pope withdrew, are alike in architecture, and quite different from the rest. Large, and much more simply decorated, with high raised window seats; the first has a ceiling painted with patterns and grotesques (which here become much more decided in style), and has a frieze of twelve half-length figures of apostles and prophets arranged in pairs, the apostles holding scrolls bearing a sentence of the Creed, the prophets’ scrolls inscribed with prophetic sayings. According to a mediæval legend, each apostle, before proceeding to evangelise the world, composed a sentence of the Creed, and to each here is assigned his traditionary verse.

The painter has used a late book of the sibyls, those interesting, legendary figures to whose traditionary sayings so much importance was attached by the early Church, and who were revived in the art of the Renaissance, with other classic myths. Twelve are given, and all the prophecies, composed by the early Church, refer to the birth of the Redeemer. The ribbon upon which the oracle is inscribed was traditionary with the painters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and Pintoricchio, like most of the Umbrian painters, was particularly attached to this decorative accessory. He uses it freely in the Belvedere, in Santa Maria del Popolo, and at Spello.

The figures in these two rooms are much restored, and the whole style is inferior and has an antiquated and archaic effect, which has been commented upon by every writer from the time of Taja. At the same time, there are certain of the sibyls, that of Delphi,[94] and she of Europa, where we recognise Pintoricchio’s special supervision in the head-dresses, the gestures, and the peculiar tricks of drapery.

Crowe and Cavalcaselle have attributed some of this work to Peruzzi, who, however, was only a boy of thirteen at this time, but Vasari speaks of “a Volterrean named Pietro d’Andrea, who spent most of his time in Rome, where he was working at some things in the palace of Alexander Borgia.” Messer Pietro d’Andrea of Volterra was the master of Peruzzi, and there is sufficient likeness to Peruzzi’s style to give strong assurance that we have here the hand of his teacher. Schmarsow sees in part the hand of a Sienese, but whoever may have been concerned in the execution, the whole must have been sketched out by Pintoricchio, and is in harmony with the rest of the suite. In the window recesses of the “Hall of the Creed,” the decorations show no falling off in originality. Dolphins, masks, satyrs, flying loves, candelabra, and garlands are used with astonishing resource and variety. On the ceiling of the “Hall of Sibyls” are emblematical groups of the planets, with gods and goddesses driving triumphal cars, which remind us of Perugino’s rendering some years later on the ceiling of the Cambio.

Nowhere can Pintoricchio’s special merits and failings be better studied than in this long and brilliant range of rooms. In detail it is easy to discern the many shortcomings. He has little feeling for line; he has never made a study of planes and masses; his personages stand about at haphazard, and often fail to belong to each other or to the events going on[95] near them. There is hardly a subservient figure in any one of the scenes which would be missed if it were blotted out, or which is essential to the balance of line or colour. The distant objects are often as full in tone as the foreground; nowhere does the spirit of the composition rise into the sublime. On the other hand, the painter never forgets the purpose that has brought him here. With a self-restraint and a feeling for effect which are unerring, he hits upon the exact size, and keeps his compositions strictly within the picture and at the right distance from the eye. Raphael’s splendid creations in the stanze suffer because of their vastness of conception and execution compared to the narrow and inadequate space from which we view them. We go back from them as far as we are able, feeling as if their position must be but a temporary one. We long to see them in a freer air. Their space seems to annihilate us, their thought is overwhelming and insistent.

Pintoricchio’s frescoes are a rich yet unobtrusive setting, they do not compel your attention, but only give the impression of a refined splendour of surrounding and a marvellous insight into beautiful harmony of colour. The effect of the light has been so nicely calculated that even when freshly executed, the walls would not have been over-brilliant for the brilliant scenes to which they formed a background. On the charm of single groups and figures I have already enlarged, but one other feature strikes us forcibly—i.e. the power possessed by the master to employ so many assistant hands of varying schools and to so parcel out the work, keep the individuality[96] of each so subservient and so impress his own style and purpose, that from end to end, although we can distinguish the various hands at work, it is only faintly and doubtfully, never so as to jar upon our sense of unity. We receive no shock as we pass from room to room, the direction of one mind runs through the whole, everywhere we are aware of the vigilant and sensitive grasp of the master’s hand upon his tools, and allowing for all the shortcomings of detail, we cannot but feel that we have here an enviable monument for a painter to leave behind him.

Alexander Borgia had no time to enjoy his freshly completed apartments. Pintoricchio must have been lingering over the last touches when, in the autumn of 1494, rumours of trouble from foreign foes reached Rome.

In September 1494 Charles VIII. of France invaded Italy. The Colonna and the Savelli, whom he had taken into his pay, were threatening the Eternal City from Frascati. Their intention was to take it by assault, make the Pope a prisoner, and seize Djem, the Mahometan prince. The Pope was filled with terror as Ostia surrendered to the allies of France, and a portion of Charles’s fleet appeared at the mouth of the Tiber. Charles himself was advancing through Tuscany, accompanied by Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, and a proposal was discussed to deprive the Pope, whose crimes had become notorious, of his power. Alexander began to make plans for the defence of the city. He assembled what troops he could muster, and garrisoned and provisioned the Castel Sant’ Angelo. On December 18th, all the furniture and valuables[97] were packed, and as Charles continued to advance, meeting with more welcome than resistance, the treasures of the Vatican were sent to the old Roman fortress. The Pope presently made a treaty with Charles, allowing him a free passage to Naples with his army, and permitting his entry into Rome. Charles entered with a magnificent army, while the Pope with his small force sat trembling in the Vatican.

In January 1495, the Pope, terrified by the violence of the French troops, left his splendid painted suite in the Vatican and shut himself up in Sant’ Angelo, where he remained while the French army sacked the city. Finally, a treaty was concluded by which Alexander ceded many of his possessions, and surrendered Prince Djem, while the king promised to recognise him as Pope, and to defend his rights, thus delivering him from his most imminent danger. The meeting of the Pope and king was arranged to take place, as if by accident, in the garden of the fortress. Charles knelt, and Alexander embraced him. The Pope bestowed the Cardinal’s hat on Briçonnet, a favourite of the king. On January 19th a Consistory was held, at which the king kissed the hand and foot of the Vicar of Christ, and did that formal homage which he had hitherto refused to render. Alexander celebrated a solemn Mass of reconciliation in St. Peter’s, and the king acted as thurifer. On January 12th, the red hat was given to another noble of France, and on the 25th, the Pope, accompanied by Prince Djem, rode with the king in a public procession through Rome, upon which Charles departed, bent on the conquest of Naples. Having accomplished this, he was back in[98] Rome in June, upon which Alexander fled to Orvieto and Perugia, probably taking Pintoricchio in his train. Charles’s policy having taken him to the north of Italy by the end of June, Alexander returned to Rome, where he now, hearing of the defeat of the French troops in Lombardy, found courage to denounce the king.

In 1497 the rooms of the upper storey of Sant’ Angelo, which Alexander at this time strongly fortified, were destroyed by an explosion of powder. They were rebuilt as quickly as possible, and the time of danger being over, Pintoricchio was again called for to immortalise the events of the last two years. There is no doubt (says Gregorovius) that Pintoricchio was in Rome at the time of Charles’s entry, and was an eyewitness of that and other stirring scenes.[28] Vasari says[29] that Pintoricchio painted a number of rooms in the Castel Sant’ Angelo, with grotesques, but the little tower in the garden was adorned with the history of Pope Alexander, and there could be descried Isabella, the Catholic Queen, Niccolo Orsino, Count of Pitigliano, Gianiacomo Trivulzio, and many other relatives and friends of the Pope, and in particular, Cæsar Borgia, with his brother and sister, and many celebrated persons of the time. The garden tower has been pulled down, and in the upper rooms only a fragment of decoration remains, a shield supported by children in Pintoricchio’s favourite manner. We are, however, indebted to Lorenzo Behaim, who for twenty-two years was the Pope’s major-domo, for a list of the subjects painted in the pleasure house.[30]

The whole story of the French king’s entry into the capital was made to redound to the glory of the Pope. Charles was represented kneeling at his feet, taking the oath, serving at Mass. The Pope was shown investing the French ecclesiastics with the Cardinal’s hat. In a procession to San Paolo, the king stood at the Pope’s bridle rein, and the final scene showed the departure for Naples, accompanied by the Sultan Djem.

In comparing these in our mind with the frescoes in the Library of Siena, painted a few years later, it is possible to imagine what Pintoricchio would have made of these very similar themes. Here, as there, there is an endowment of the red hat, a Consistory, an act of homage to the enthroned Pope, and a gay procession. In the Louvre is a drawing of Pintoricchio’s of three pages leaning on halberds, which may be part of the design for one of these frescoes. Djem he would have brought in again, as he depicted him in the Borgia Apartments. The number of contemporary portraits would have made this second great piece of work executed for the Borgia Pope of surpassing interest to historians.

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[100] CHAPTER VII

SPELLO

IN the beginning of 1501 Pintoricchio left Perugia and went off to Spello, the little town eighteen miles to the south of it. Here the prior of the chapel of the college, Troilo Baglioni, a son of the proudest house in Perugia, had lately been created a bishop; and, naturally enough, when he wished to decorate his cathedral, he sent for the painter of his native city, who had by now made himself so famous a name. This little chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore at Spello is dark and damp enough, but in its decay it is still possible to divine something of its whilom beauty. As Pintoricchio planned his designs for it, we can see that his mind was still running on the rich work he had left in Rome two years before, and again and again he has adapted ideas from the Borgia Apartments, suiting them, with his own delicate judgment, to the smaller position and to the provincial situation. So cleverly has he managed, that the narrow chapel gains air and space and outlook, and even in its dim ruin we have an instant sense of life going on all round us. He has here used the airy architectural surroundings which he had so happily dwelt upon in the Buffalini Chapel, with the result that his work gains greatly in aerial space, it acquires a freshness and a refinement which[101] is well adapted to the country district in which it is placed, and we lose that sense, which almost oppresses us amid all the fascination of the Borgia rooms, of being shut into a succession of gorgeously-jewelled caskets.

In triangles, formed in the roof by heavy borders of grotesques, Pintoricchio has placed four sibyls, Erythrean, European, Tiburtine, and Samian. Each sits in a carved niche, on a throne with raised steps; the same thrones, on a smaller scale, as those in the chamber of the Arts and Sciences in Rome. Books, open or clasped, lie about the steps; at each end of the thrones are erected altars, inscribed with the mystic sayings of the inspired women. The sibyls themselves, as they read or write or look upwards in an ecstasy, are much more elaborate in dress and fashion of hair than the symbolical figures in the Vatican. In style, they approach more nearly to the sibyls afterwards painted in the choir of Santa Maria del Popolo, or to the personages in the Library at Siena.

The three walls of the little side chapel are filled by paintings of the “Annunciation,” the “Nativity,” and “Christ disputing with the Doctors.” From the inscription on the “Annunciation,” recording the finishing of the chapel, we gather that the painter began at the opposite side, with the “Dispute.” He places this scene in the courtyard of the temple, a Bramante-like building of rather clumsy proportions, which fills the background, and has a niche on either side, with statues of Flora and Minerva. The group in the foreground suggests that Pintoricchio is still full of recollections[102] of the “Dispute of St. Catherine,” and is dwelling on the contrast he there emphasised between the fragile champion and the old philosophers. The Child is checking His arguments on His fingers in the same way, the doctors press around him in Eastern caps and turbans. On the extreme left an austere dignitary in dark robe and biretta can be no other than the bishop, Troilo Baglioni himself. The books of the learned men are thrown upon the ground, as they listen to the Child’s wisdom. Raphael has used the same incident in his “Disputà.” On the right, Joseph and Mary hurry forward, but she checks her husband’s impatience with her hand upon his girdle; behind Mary are several women, in whose heads we recognise models used in the “Burial of St. Bernardino,” strong profiles, of which he must have had the sketches by him.

In the “Nativity,” which occupies the inner wall, and which is sadly ruined by the damp and decay, Pintoricchio shakes off his Roman manner, and returns to the purely Umbrian style and to the influence of Fiorenzo di Lorenzo. This must have been one of the most charming of all his frescoes. The distance stretches away, soft and harmonious, the towers and spires of the little town of Spello nestle into the blue hillside, a choir of angels which seems to have been transplanted from a panel of Fiorenzo’s stands upon the clouds above, and at the angels’ feet rise the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life, with their branches touching the sky. The stable is represented by a lofty, classic porch, on the roof of which sits a peacock, Juno’s bird, which Christian tradition had transferred to Mary, as the Queen of Heaven. Two beams have [103]fallen in front of it, into the form of a cross. Midway advances the procession of the kings, winding down a mountain path, and grouped about its foot. All these serve as background to the sacred group with the shepherds, which is placed very low down, quite at the edge of the picture. Pintoricchio has shown a want of proportion between the different figures of his principal group, but otherwise they are excellent. The Virgin’s is one of his most lovely and delicate faces. Fortunately it is uninjured, and no print can give adequately its tender beauty, above the rose and blue and deep green of the gold embroidered draperies. Joseph stands behind, raising his hands in adoring wonder; behind him, on the ground, lies such a packsaddle as is still used in Italy. The shepherds—peasants from the Umbrian hills—kneel in deep devotion, one holds his humble offering of a basket of eggs. The Child and Mother and the general arrangement of the landscape recall the little altar-piece in Santa Maria del Popolo, but the whole effect is much more beautiful, since the painter has awakened to the realisation of far-reaching space.

The “Annunciation” has the same advantage over the otherwise not dissimilar one in the Borgia Hall of Mysteries. The angel is almost identical; the Virgin, standing at her reading-desk and shrinking backwards, has all the naïve charm of the school of Fiorenzo. The great Renaissance hall stretches far behind, and beyond the perspective of stately columns we see a gay little view set in the archway: a scene at the city gates, wayfarers arriving at the inn outside the walls, a table with a white cloth[104] spread, a dog jumping up,—Pintoricchio’s favourite greyhound,—horsemen riding on through the gateway, a well, and a woman coming to draw water. The grotesques upon the pilasters are carefully drawn, but roughly painted, and the shadows hatched in. It is in this fresco, under the little prie-dieu at the side, that Pintoricchio has drawn his own portrait, which almost startles us as we catch the life-like blink of its eyes, as it looks out from among the conventionalised saints. A coral rosary and the painter’s brushes are painted below, and the label, BERNARDINO PICTORICUS PERUSINUS. Perugino, a few miles off, was working at the Hall of Exchange, and one of the artists evidently took the idea from the other of painting the head in this way instead of introducing himself after the more usual fashion as a spectator.

A short distance from the town lies the little church of San Girolamo, where one is shown as Pintoricchio’s a “Sposalizio” and a “Nativity.” The first cannot be his. It is a very poor little fresco, without any indications even of his influence, and more probably by some obscure follower of Perugino or Lo Spagna. The arrangement of heads of the group of maidens standing behind Mary has either been taken from, or suggested by, that in Raphael’s “Sposalizio.” In the “Presepio,” which is on the wall of the cloister chapel (which has since been used as an outhouse), ruined as it is, we are better able to trace the master’s hand. The Madonna’s head is adorned with a twisted veil, and a light scarf is drawn across the breast and arranged in the same way as in the fresco over the door of the Borgia room (No. III.). The heads are all drawn with [105]delicacy and decision, and even now we can trace original, sharp, precise touches. The man behind with the lamb on his shoulders is in Pintoricchio’s simpler and earlier manner—a good sketch straight from the model. The angels on the clouds kneel stiffly, and the whole gives the impression of a very early work, which has been copied in some details for the later “Adoration of the Shepherds” in the Baglioni Chapel. The landscape, though much destroyed, still retains his characteristics.

The frescoes at Spoleto have been covered up for some years, as the chapel of the Duomo in which they are is undergoing restoration. They are described as ruined representations of a “Madonna and Saints,” “God the Father,” and a “Dead Christ.” Vasari does not speak of any of the frescoes at Spello, nor are they noticed by Pascoli and his contemporaries, while Mariotti and Orsini, in the eighteenth century, say very little about them—Vermiglioli and Adamo Rossi first give a full account of them.

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[106] CHAPTER VIII

SIENA AND THE LAST OF ROME

FEW painters of the fifteenth century had received so great a share of Roman patronage as Pintoricchio, and the favour now shown him, which changed the whole of his life, came from a Cardinal who had doubtless become familiar with his Roman work.

Nearly fifty years earlier, Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, son of a noble but impoverished house of Siena, had been created Pope by the title of Pius II. Before his elevation he had led a life full of stirring events—in his rise to greatness he had reinstated his exiled family and restored it to wealth and honour. Æneas was a man of unbounded ambition, and not always scrupulous in the means by which he obtained advancement, but he seems to have been a man of affectionate character and charming personality, his learning was deep and his taste highly cultivated; on the whole, he was honest and upright, while he was truly enthusiastic in his efforts to uphold the liberties of Christendom in the East against the dreaded advances of the Moslem. It is no wonder that his own family regarded him as a saint and hero. His nephew, Francesco Piccolomini, whom he had made Cardinal, and who eventually became Pope Pius III., decided, some forty-eight years after his uncle’s death, to erect a great family memorial to him. In 1495[107] he had built the rich chapel of St. John in the nave of Siena Cathedral, and soon after set to work on a Library, into which he moved all the collections of books and MSS. left him by his kinsman. Lorenzo di Mariano, a Sienese sculptor, was entrusted with the marble work. The interior wood-carving was by Antonio Barili, and Antonio Ormanni designed the bronze doors. The interior was to be richly frescoed, and the Cardinal, recollecting the achievements of Pintoricchio in the service of three Popes, passed over the painters of Siena and summoned Messer Bernardino of Perugia to undertake the great piece of work at Siena.

The contract made between the Cardinal and the painter, and dated June 29th, 1502, was discovered about twenty years ago in the Sienese archives by Sig. Milanesi. It offers many points of interest; the chief conditions are that during the time the painting is in progress he shall not undertake any other work of painting of any kind or in any place. He is to work the vaulting with fantasies and colours “which he shall judge most handsome, beautiful, and lively,” to paint designs “nowadays styled the ‘Grottesque.’” To draw a coat-of-arms of the Cardinal in the centre of the vaulting, “to gild it and make it fine,” to make in fresco ten Histories, for which the life of the Pope shall be given him as guide, with other minute details as to the gold, ultramarine, enamel blue, azure, and greens to be used,—and the framework and gilding to be added. He is bound to draw all the designs with his own hand, both in cartoon and on the wall, and to paint, retouch, and finish all the heads himself, and the epitaphs are to be placed in an oblong[108] space between each pilaster, with the indication of the history painted above.

In return for “the vaulting of required perfection, and the ten pictures of such richness and excellence as is fitting,” the Cardinal promises him one thousand golden ducats, to be paid in instalments, the first for buying gold and colours “in Venice,” and the rest from time to time as the work progresses. A dwelling in Siena is to be provided, “a house hard by the Cathedral,” with scaffoldings and the materials. Such wine, grain, and oil as he needs he shall be bound to take on account and in part payment from the factor of the Cardinal. His goods, movables, and fixtures are to be pledged as security for the due performance of the contract.

During the autumn and winter of 1502 Pintoricchio was making his preparations for an undertaking which must occupy him for some years. We have no indication of any visit to Venice to buy colours; but he returned to Perugia, probably finished up certain panel paintings at this time, gathered his workmen and assistants, his garzoni, together, and moved his household goods to Siena.

In the spring of 1503 he was hard at work at the ceiling. In the middle we see the coat-of-arms of the Piccolomini family, as provided by the contract, surmounted by the Cardinal’s hat. Francesco became Pope on September 21st, 1503, so that evidently this part of the work was then already finished, otherwise the tiara would have replaced the Cardinal’s hat. Only three weeks later Pius III. died, so that though he may just have seen the splendour of the ceiling, and[109] no doubt had inspected the cartoons, the frescoes would hardly have been begun in his lifetime.

The work was stopped for a time, but fortunately for Pintoricchio and for posterity the contract had contained a clause binding the Cardinal “in his goods and heirs,” as well as personally, to carry out the agreement. The Pontiff had also ratified this in his will, and his two brothers, acting as his executors, prepared to carry out his wishes. Some unavoidable delay there was, and during this time Pintoricchio, being absolved for the time being from the promise to take no other commissions, applied himself to various works for rather more than a year.

The chief among these was the decoration of the beautiful little chapel dedicated to St. John the Baptist in the cathedral at Siena. Its frescoes were the gift of Alberto Aringhieri, a Knight of Rhodes, who has had his portrait as a young man painted on one side of the door and in advancing years on the other. The other frescoes have been entirely repainted, excepting the one of the “Birth of St. John,” and on this, which has been much retouched, it is so evident that two hands have worked that I do not believe Pintoricchio himself painted any part except the maid, and possibly the Infant. The maid is drawn with a much stronger and more precise touch than any of the rest, and instead of the veil or drapery with which he usually covers the heads of his sacred personages, she has an Italian dress and headgear, with loops and bows. The same model has served for her face and head as for the “St. Catherine” in the National Gallery, and apparently both are from[110] life. The interest of the chapel centres in the two portraits of the donor, and both these go to increase the painter’s reputation. The young knight keeping his vigil, in full panoply, his plumed helm and steel gauntlets lying by his side, the great white cross of St. John of Jerusalem upon his crimson surcoat, is a creation full of chivalrous fancy. The old knight, kneeling opposite, in a dress of a dignitary of the cathedral, and a black skull cap, is a strong, well-drawn figure, well felt under the robes. Both are small in size and reserved in treatment. The backgrounds are full of detail, with buildings, meant to be Eastern, and palm trees. The colour of the figures is very harmonious—the soft greys of the armour, and the dull red of the scarf against it; all the links of the chain mail executed with the dainty care of a miniature. In both frescoes the light and dark are massed with unusual judgment. This was paid for September 8th, 1504.

Another piece of work with which these months were occupied was the design of “Fortune,” for one of the spaces on the pavement of Siena Cathedral. The pavement of Siena is a remarkable production differing from any other work of art in existence; a mixture of intaglio or engraving on stone, varied by intarsia or inlay of marbles. The work had been long in progress, and designs for the various scenes had been furnished by artists from 1369 onwards. One painter of Umbrian extraction, Matteo di Giovanni, had already supplied his favourite subject of the “Murder of the Innocents.” Pintoricchio’s design is reproduced in the fourth space as we walk [111]up the nave. It is an allegory of the excellence of Wisdom and the folly of Pleasure. The sky is of pure black marble, the island of grey, the fields, the sea, and the figures of pale marble, engraved with dark lines and inlaying. In the middle sits Wisdom, crowned with flowers, and bearing a palm branch and a book. On one hand Socrates receives from her the palm; on the other a philosopher casts a collection of trinkets and baubles into the sea. On a lower plane, a company of pilgrims, the foremost of whom is presumably a portrait, climbs a path set with stones and thistles, and beset with serpents, lizards, a tortoise, and a snail. One sits down and falls asleep, another turns to shake his fist at Pleasure, a fair, naked woman, holding a cornucopia of flowers, and spreading a sail to catch the passing breeze. One foot rests on the ball of Fortune, as she steps off the shore on to a rudderless boat, and a young man, the last in the procession, casts back a wistful glance in her direction. This design is significant as showing what the painter could do when colour was denied him. The balance of the groups is kept with great art, and the outline of Pleasure is full of grace and daring. The general shape of the reliefs, in light against dark and as furnishing a pattern, is treated with perfect success.

In this same September an altar in the chapel of San Francesco at Siena was unveiled, but this chapel was destroyed by fire, with other works of art, in 1655.

With the spring Pintoricchio again began the painting of the Library frescoes, but he had not proceeded far when Andrea Piccolomini, one of the late Pope’s executors, died. That this must have necessitated a[112] further re-adjustment, and meant another period of delay, we may gather from finding that, in June 1505, Pintoricchio was once more in Rome. The ten months that followed must have been very busy ones, and no doubt the master, after the repeated hitches under his new patrons, was relieved to find himself once more working for those earlier ones in whose service he had always had good fortune.

He was again installed in Santa Maria del Popolo, that church which had been such a favourite place of devotion of Sixtus IV. and other churchmen of the House of Rovere.

The choir, which now absorbed him for some months, and which is the most perfectly preserved and the most untouched of all his works, is a wonderful piece of ceiling painting, in the style in which he had lately adorned the Library ceiling at Siena. In the middle a “Coronation of the Virgin” recalls Fiorenzo and, still more, Bernardino Mariotto, the Umbrian with whom Pintoricchio is so constantly confused. Round this middle octagon the four Evangelists alternate with four sibyls, and at each corner the four Fathers of the Church sit on thrones. The sibyls are graceful types of young Italian women of the Renaissance—full of sweetness and refinement—the women Messer Bernardino knew in the mannered and highly-cultured palaces: no beings of a weird and wild prophetic race. They half recline in the mapped-out divisions; each perfectly fills the space without crowding, and assists the geometrical coup d’œil which is the first impression of the ceiling in its entirety, yet the pose of each is extremely easy and unconstrained, [113]and the lines soft and flowing. Of the Evangelists, each painted in a tondo, St. Matthew with a beautiful angel holding the ink, and St. Luke painting the portrait of the Virgin, are both singularly clear and excellent figures. The stately Fathers of the Church sit on throned seats like those of the Arts and Sciences, or the Sibyls at Spello. Their robes ring the changes on beautiful dashes of colour—white, rich green and rose, scarlet and dark blue. The whole is set in a bold pattern of grotesques in gold and vivid colours, scrolls mounted by women’s busts, quaint birds growing out of acanthus branches, putti riding on griffins, and a score of other fantastic devices. The impression is at once gay, graceful, and distinguished, excellent in decorative effect, and delicate in detail.

This was Pintoricchio’s last work in Rome. Here he laid down the brush which he had first taken up in the Sixtine Chapel twenty-three years before. Even now there is more of his art there than that of any painter except Raphael, and at that day how proudly he could pass through the long series of great halls and chapels, which owed their beauty in greatest part to his brush and to his fancy.

Pintoricchio’s last frescoes were three, painted for the palace of Pandolfo Petrucci, in succession to a series nearly completed by Signorelli and Girolamo Genga. They represented classical subjects, and of them there only remains “The Return of Ulysses,” in the National Gallery. The fresco painting in this is rough and slight, the figures have little modelling, but are almost like patterns upon the background, the[114] limbs of the suitors are unstructural even for Pintoricchio, yet the whole effect is charming. The head of the principal suitor is fine and expressive, and is very probably a portrait from life—perhaps one of the sons of the house. Penelope, bending over her web, is natural and life-like—a careful study of a girl in the costume of the day. The scene is drawn in clever perspective, and there is much conscious humour in the accessories; the cat playing with a ball; the sirens grasping their two tails in their hands, as they warble round the galley, to the mast of which Ulysses is bound; the young man in another boat diving headlong into the water, unable to resist their fascination; and the island where the wanderer is interviewing Circe and her swine. Here Pintoricchio is once more fresh and unconventional, fertile in fancy. The bold manner in which the lines of the loom are placed right across the picture is as daring as it is successful. The attitudes and relations of the figures are full of originality, and the uncompromising square of the window lets a flood of light and space into the foreground, so full of action and movement.

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[115] CHAPTER IX

THE LIBRARY AT SIENA

DR. STEINMANN suggests, with great probability, that we may fix March as the month of Pintoricchio’s return to Siena in 1506, for in that month he took into his employ the Perugian painter, Eusebio di San Giorgio. This, no doubt, marks a fresh start, and the master now worked steadily on until the Library was completed.

There is little that is devotional in character about the Libreria in Siena. As the visitor passes the bronze doors, past the marble columns of pagan sculpture and Renaissance copy, he loses all sense of being in part of a sacred building. The chamber itself is singularly destitute of the ordinary objects of religious art. No Divine Persons, no evangelists, saints, or fathers—not an angel in the whole range of subjects. We have here one of those examples of historic fresco which were a feature common to fifteenth-century art, a popular way of decorating the living-halls of great seigneurs, such as the Palaces at Urbino and Mantua, or the Palazzo Schifanoia at Ferrara.

We are expressly told that Pintoricchio was given the life of Æneas Sylvius by his secretary Campana, as a guide to his choice of events, but careful examination has shown certain variations and deviations from this[116] life, pointing to some other authority in use; and on comparison we find that he certainly also had recourse to the Pope’s own memoirs, which supplied certain details and particulars not included in Campana’s work.

Dr. Schmarsow has made a long and exhaustive study of these frescoes with special reference to Pintoricchio’s relations with Raphael.[31] It is impossible to go as minutely into the question as this talented German has done, but it is one of great interest in artistic history, and no life of Pintoricchio would be complete without some reference to it.

The possibility of Raphael having supplied drawings and designs has been a matter of heated controversy. Morelli casts scorn on the supposition; Crowe and Cavalcaselle stand aghast and declare that, believing it, the life of Raphael would have to be re-written. Bode says it is audacious to contend that the great master and entrepreneur would adopt the designs of a young, untried painter. Vasari asks how we can suspect that the master of fifty would follow a twenty-year-old assistant: this is the general tendency of objections. While, naturally, regretting any conviction that tends to detract from the painter whose fascination I feel, and upon whose life I am engaged, having to the best of my power weighed all the rival criticisms, I cannot avoid the conviction that Schmarsow is right, and that Raphael did help with two or three at least of the frescoes, and perhaps, as he suggests, with others. The evidence that ascribes the drawings left for them to the young Urbinate appears to me too strong to resist. [117]Raphael, to begin with, though only twenty when these drawings were executed, cannot be called unknown. He had already produced several noticeable works. Only three years later, in a contract of 1505, he is styled the best master in Perugia. The nuns of Monte Luce, wanting an altar-piece, “fere trovare el maestro el migliore, si posse consiglialo ... lo quale si chiamava Maestro Raphaello da Urbino.” Pintoricchio would have had the wit to see what a gift he was dealing with; and, as for taking the designs of an assistant, had not he himself supplied several of the figures for Perugino’s great work in the Sixtine?

The great probability of Raphael’s being in Siena in 1502, when the designs for the cartoons would be making, is proved by his picture of the “Three Graces”—two of which are copied from the mutilated Greek group, one of the best specimens of the antique then known. This group was brought from Rome by the Cardinal, to place in his costly Library. Vasari speaks of the Cardinal (not the Pope) as having brought it to the not quite finished Library, which would put the transit before September 1503. In the summer of 1502 the Cardinal made his last journey from Rome, and it was very likely then that he brought it back. An elaborate pencil sketch of it exists: opinions are divided as to which of the painters this was the work of, but Raphael’s own picture is guarantee that he must have seen and been struck by the original. It has been argued that it is not absolutely necessary that the author of the drawings should have been in Siena, but their adaptability and suitability to the[118] walls makes this most unlikely. Four drawings for the Library exist—one each in Florence and Perugia, one at Milan, and one at Chatsworth. They are drawn with Indian ink, and the two first touched with bistre and heightened with white.

The first, which deals with the “Journey to the Council of Basel,” has a long inscription at the top. The handwriting of this, if compared with Raphael’s letter to Domenico Alfani, or that to his uncle Simone Ciarla, is no doubt Raphael’s own, and the same hand has made notes in other parts of the drawing. It is possible, but not very probable, that the assistant should have annotated the master’s design; but the connection between the inscription and the drawing, the various small changes made and accounted for as it progresses, make us almost certain that the designer of this cartoon was also the writer of the notes upon it. As each drawing has been transferred to the wall and worked out, we see gradual alterations, evidently made to add importance to the hero of the series. In the sketch Æneas wears a tight doublet and close cap. He looks, what he was, a young man going forth to seek his fortune. In the fresco he is dressed in a mantle and broad hat, to make the future Pope more imposing. The letter which he carried to Capranica has been placed in his hand. The storm from which Æneas escaped has been merely indicated in the drawing. In the fresco, lowering clouds and a rainbow are added. A dog, the greyhound of which Pintoricchio was so fond, has been introduced, standing perfectly still though in the leash of a galloping rider.

We gather from all these changes that the drawing did [119]not exactly satisfy the painter who worked on it after it was transferred to the wall. It is, however, in the spirit and bearing of the whole that we see the greatest difference. In the drawing the artist has shaken off the stiff Perugian manner, has got at nature, and has found new ways of handling. The riders are strong and elastic; the page to the right is supple and natural, but in the fresco is twisted round into an ungainly attitude. The cavalcade has a life and movement that we hardly expect to find in Pintoricchio. The horses, if anything, bear witness more remarkably than the men. Up to this time very few masters could draw horses with any success. Uccello and Donatello, Verrocchio and his pupil Leonardo, all Florentines, were almost the sole exceptions. To decide if Raphael could draw horses we have only to glance at such early works of his as the two little “St. Georges” in the Louvre. It was in 1502 that Raphael first came to Florence, just at the time that Leonardo’s great cartoon of the battle of the standard was exposed to the public. We are told that Raphael spent much time in copying Leonardo. Indeed, among the so-called Venetian sketches is one, now called the “Battle of the Standard,” which is unanimously ascribed to Raphael, and which is believed to be a sketch from Leonardo’s cartoon. If we compare the horse in the drawing for the “Journey to Basel” with that horse, and if we further compare with both the horse in the sketch for the “St. George” (at St. Petersburg) we shall see numerous points of resemblance—in the broad head and tapering muzzle, the round, accentuated haunches, the shape of the foot, and the very curves of the flowing tail.[120] The horses in the fresco look very wooden beside them, with their long, woolly tails. What we feel forcibly—what anyone must feel who is, not necessarily an artist, but a judge of a horse, is that the man who drew the sketch knew indisputably what were the points of a good horse, while if the painter of the fresco had known as much he could never have painted the horses on the wall.

There is, moreover, another point, which I do not think has been noticed before. On looking again at Raphael’s undoubted sketch of the “Battle for the Standard,” we perceive that the splendid figure of the nude man who snatches at the horse’s head has served for the model of the standard-bearer in the drawing of the “Journey to Basel”; every line is the same, the plant of the feet, the turn of the head, the uplifted arm. Now we know that if Raphael was in Siena, he came straight from Florence, while we have no indication that Pintoricchio was ever in Florence at all, and what would be more likely than that Raphael, full of his studies of Leonardo, should take the opportunity of bringing in the horses and men he had just been copying, and which we know to have made so deep an impression upon him?

The drawing at Perugia for the fresco of the “Meeting of Frederick III. and Eleanora of Portugal” has the words, “questa e la quinta della (storia) del Papa” (this is the fifth of the story of the Pope), written on it, in the same fine handwriting that we see on the “Journey to Basel.” We see here the clear rules of composition learnt from Perugino—the middle point and radiation from it—with the figures placed in pairs, [121]as in the “Giving of the Keys”—an arrangement which had great influence over Raphael’s compositions, though it never took much hold of Pintoricchio. In the fresco, the lines of the radius are quite lost sight of; the spectators are brought in in the usual indistinct masses. It has been suggested that, as the spot on which the meeting took place is much more like in the fresco than in the drawing,—the column being evidently copied in the first and not in the last,—Raphael may have drawn the design away from Siena, and sent it marked with the inscription.

Schmarsow sees a resemblance to Raphael’s style in the sketch for the “Conference” (IV.)—in the lines of composition, and in the more graceful and life-like action of the Pope’s head and some of the groups at the side;—the two fine figures in front in the fresco, which are unmistakably by Pintoricchio, do not exist in the drawing.

The drawing at Milan, of fresco III., the “Poet Crowned,” is now known to be a sketch from the finished fresco, and though it is under Raphael’s name, is not worthy of notice. There are, however, at Oxford two studies of four pages, the style and technique of which point to Raphael. These appear in the fresco. They are the pike-bearer and standard-bearer, with legs apart, in the background of the company, and the page in front of them leaning on a stick. The loggia in the background accords well with the style of Raphael’s buildings. His taste for architectural backgrounds was quite as keen as that of Pintoricchio, and he had been in intimate relation with Bramante and with Luciano Lauranna, the architect,[122] who was his kinsman, when he came to Perugia. Certain details in this remind us of the loggia of the Castle of Urbino, with which, of course, Raphael was well acquainted. What is most unlike Pintoricchio, and very characteristic of Raphael, in this fresco, is the concentration of interest, the way in which the attention is insensibly attracted to the principal figure; the poetic moment is caught in a way which points to Raphael’s quality of composition. Here and there are figures of a freshness and grace which speak to us of the freer hand of the youthful artist pressing forward and casting aside old methods. Such is the young prince in the second fresco, with plumed hat, who stands at the left of the King of Scotland.

Peculiarities of Pintoricchio’s own are repeated over and over again. The hand with outstretched finger we find no less than thirteen times. The same heads are used. The head of the greybeard on the left, in fresco I., is repeated nine times; the man with pointed beard, in front on the left of fresco II., comes in as the emperor in fresco III., and in the foreground, as a spectator, in the sixth tableau. We admire again the way in which Pintoricchio is able to divide his assistants, to use their various hands so that monotony is avoided, while imposing his own style sufficiently to produce a strikingly homogeneous impression. Instead of fighting against the amalgamated proof that Raphael had some share in the work, we may picture to ourselves the friendship that we have reason to think existed between the older man and the versatile and tactful youth, whose talent for making friends with his elders never failed him. We[123] can imagine the deep consultation with which they must have paced these floors, and pored over sketches and designs; and if we wanted an assurance of Raphael’s presence and of his employer’s affection, surely the number of times that a youth is painted, for whom Raphael, to all appearance, stood as model, would supply one—not only in the careful portrait in the scene of “St. Catherine’s Canonisation,” but in one of the bearers to the old Pope, fresco VIII., and in the young man stepping forward, hand on hip, in fresco X., not to single out others less conspicuously like.

In the first, third, and fifth, then, Schmarsow sees the design of Raphael, and he thinks he also had some hand in numbers two and four. No doubt, after these, the composition of the remaining ones is less excellent, and there is a falling off in life and spirit.

Some of the helpers seem to come direct from Perugino’s workshop. We find the prototypes of the greybeards in the Cambio—Socrates, Pericles, and the rest. In the execution of the “Betrothal,” Steinmann sees signs of a Lombard’s hand, in the dress and hair of the maids-of-honour, and the groups massed in the background. Sodoma was possibly working with Pintoricchio; he was in Siena this year, and Rumohr thinks he sees his hand in the distant figures of the crowning of the poet. Eusebio di San Giorgio, the Raffaelesque Perugian, was helping, and possibly also Pacchiarotto.

Born in 1405, at the little village of Corsignano, afterwards re-named Pienza, Æneas Piccolomini early showed a keenness of intellect and an aptitude for classic learning which induced his tutor, the great scholar[124] Fidelfo, to send the needy young scion of a great house out into the world to seek his fortune, with introductions which carried him into the service of Domenico Capranica, Bishop of Fermo, that Cardinal whose tomb may be seen in Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. Domenico made him his secretary, and, as he was on his way to the Council at Basel, he took Æneas in his suite. The story told by the frescoes begins here.

The cavalcade, having narrowly escaped shipwreck on the Libyan strand and landed at Genoa, are setting forth on their “Journey across the Apennines to Basel.” Behind them is the sea; in the sky the great storm-clouds are passing away, and the rainbow shines out. Above the bay we discern the town, the point where now stands the Doria Palace and its gardens; the solemn churchmen journeying forward on their sedate mules. In the foreground rides Æneas and a youthful follower. The whole of the attention centres in the bright handsome figure of Æneas; our interest is at once bespoken on behalf of the gallant young adventurer going forth on his spirited white horse to seek his fortune. The young man on the bay horse beyond him, another layman among the throng of clerics and dignitaries, may be intended for his brother-secretary, Piero da Noceto. This is one of the most charming of the frescoes, full of movement and gaiety. Pintoricchio does not give much prominence to the “Conference at Basel,” which was one of anti-Papal tendencies.

In the next fresco we find the young Piccolomini on a “Mission to James I. of Scotland,” to whom he[125] was despatched by the Cardinal of Santa Croce, an able and influential man, into whose service he had entered in 1440, and who sent him to persuade the King of Scotland to cross the Border and to menace the King of England. His interview with James I. forms the subject of the second fresco. The King, in yellow robes, and the two supporters on either hand, in blue and green, are the most prominent figures, and form between them a sort of triangle, a symmetrical manner of composition which was just coming into favour. We have to look for the beautiful and graceful figure of Æneas as, full of dignity, he comes forward to the side of the King’s throne—his gesture in telling the points of his message upon his fingers is that which Pintoricchio makes use of in “St. Catherine before the Philosophers”; but this is a much more natural and easy attitude. His dark red robe and violet mantle hang in simple and voluminous folds. With his flowing hair he might be a young St. John taken out of one of Perugino’s pictures. The background here is very beautiful, seen through the airy row of cinque-cento arches, with the sunny little town in the distance reflected in the lake. In his memoirs, the young secretary has left us a most graphic description of his impressions of Scotland, of his journey north from Dover, of the comely blue-eyed women and scantily-clothed men, and comments on the singular kind of sulphurous stone which they burn instead of wood. He gives a vivid picture of these islands in the first half of the fifteenth century; but the painter had no knowledge to enable him to grasp it. He has apparently heard that Scotland was a land of lakes[126] and mountains; but though the interview took place in mid-winter, he has made the trees in full leaf.

Æneas spent much time in study of the classics and on verse composition, after the manner of Cicero. He had achieved a poem of two thousand lines, entitled “Nymphilexis,” which was received with acclamations by his friends. Modern critics hold its merit to be as low as its easy morality, and in fact it was a true index of the discreditable life he was at this time leading at the German Court. In 1442 he was at Basel with the German Ambassador, and was commended to the service of the King of the Romans, afterwards the Emperor, Frederick III. Frederick proposed to make him one of his Imperial secretaries, and to appoint him his Court poet. It was an honour which had hitherto been in use only in the more refined Italian courts, where it had been conferred on Petrarch, Dante, and others, and was esteemed an extraordinary mark of excellence in arts and literature. Only one person in the kingdom could hold it at a time, and after receiving it Æneas Silvius signed himself “poeta” in all his letters, so that we need not wonder that this event was chosen as one of the most remarkable of his life. Æneas, in his flowing robes, kneels at the King’s feet; the throne with its ample steps is set in a splendid, open piazza, with the noble flight of steps leading up to the loggia and out into the blue landscape; little groups enliven the background; a man stabs at a woman on the balcony; handsome pages and courtiers stand about. It has been pointed out that, as if to mark the neutrality of [127]Germany on the question of the Papacy, not a single ecclesiastic appears in the crowd.

The memoirs at this time show Æneas as a clever waiter on the favour of princes, not over-scrupulous in striving for advancement, watching the signs of the times, and chafing under his dependence and poverty. In 1445 he was sent by Frederick III. on an important mission to Pope Eugenius (fresco IV.), and from this time he becomes a figure in European history. He begins himself to plan definitely for the unity of the Church, and to desire to stem the forward movements of the Turks. His journey from Germany to Italy in the depths of winter was an arduous one. He encountered swollen torrents and broken bridges, and guided by peasants had “to scale most high and trackless ways, and precipitous, snow-clad mountains. On the road he visited his parents at Siena, and when they tried to dissuade him from approaching the fierce and unforgiving Pope Eugenius, declared that he would carry out his embassy to a prosperous end, or perish in the attempt.”

He was eminently successful in his negotiations, and effected a reconciliation between Rome and Germany, and the fresco represents him kneeling humbly before the Pope and kissing his foot. On either side sits the long row of cardinals; outside we see the busy life of the Papal Court. Here Pintoricchio has brought in a rather (for him) unusual harmony in greens on the carpeting, the baldacchino, and the Pope’s robes. The two figures in the foreground are said to be portraits of the Cardinals of Como and Amiens, who were both powerful friends of Æneas. The little scene through[128] the arches on the right of the Pope brings in another episode, where the envoy receives (fresco V.) investiture as Cardinal.

After this successful mission the Secretary for the first time turned his mind to the ecclesiastical life, and began to reckon on all the bright prospects it was likely to open to him. He had hitherto had the honesty to regard the license of his life as a barrier to religious orders; but his passions were growing more controllable with advancing years, and his dislike to the idea of the priesthood had passed away. He writes that he has passed from the worship of Venus to that of Bacchus, and appears to think nothing more could be required of anyone. In 1446 he received the tonsure, and was speedily named Bishop of Trieste; and three years later was appointed to the See of Siena. It was in this capacity that he was chosen to welcome to Italy Leonora of Portugal (fresco VI.), the bride of his late patron. Frederick III. was to come to Siena to meet her, and to proceed to Rome for the wedding. After some delays, Æneas received the princess on her landing at Leghorn; and on her arrival at Siena she was met by Frederick, accompanied by a splendid retinue, which included a hundred citizens “in scarlet and samite,” a thousand knights under Duke Albert of Austria, the young King of Hungary, the precious relics of the city and clergy innumerable. The royal pair met outside the Camollia gate, and memoirs tell us that when the bride came in sight Frederick leapt from his horse and hastened to meet her, and that “he was rejoiced to see her so young and fair.”

This is the moment chosen for the fifth fresco, and [129]gives the artist every scope for lively action and gay and brilliant colouring. Æneas, standing between the King and his young bride, is still the most prominent figure. The ladies of her train are grouped around the Infanta, as the attendant maidens round Mary in many a version of the “Sposalizio.” Behind the Bishop stands a dignitary with a white cross on his breast, who we identify from Pintoricchio’s lately finished portrait in the Baptistry, as Alberto Aringhieri, the Knight of Rhodes. The man on the left, with heavily-draped mantle and looped-up hat, is Hans Leubin, the King’s Court poet, who had been appointed to deliver an address of welcome, which he is represented as just beginning to recite. Behind the group is set up, by a pardonable anachronism, the marble column which was afterwards placed there as a memorial of the meeting-place. On either side is a tall, stately plane-tree and a fruit-bearing palm, typical of the bridal pair. The road winds up to the Camollia gate, beyond which we espy the tall towers of the city, “Siena of the rosy walls and rosy towers,” the cathedral with its dome and campanile, and the ground falling away into the ravine which lies between it and San Domenico.

Whether Raphael’s inspiration really was withdrawn at this period, or whether Pintoricchio’s own fancy flagged, it is undeniable that the remaining frescoes show a falling off, and are less satisfactory than the earlier ones. The next scene shows us “Æneas Silvius receiving the Cardinal’s hat.” On the ride to Rome with the bridal pair, Frederick had drawn rein as they came to the brow of the hill, from which they first[130] looked down on the valley of the Tiber, and said to Æneas, “Look now—we go up to Rome; methinks I see thee a Cardinal, and in truth thy fortunes will not tarry there, thou shalt climb yet higher; St. Peter’s chair awaits thee; look not down on me when thou shalt have reached that pinnacle of honour.” And though Æneas modestly disclaimed such a prospect, he confessed afterwards how great were his efforts to enter the Sacred College. His hopes were frustrated by the reigning Pope Nicolas, who was notoriously unfriendly to him, and it was not till the election of Alonso da Borgia as Calixtus II. that he saw his way to further advancement. Calixtus, who was an old man and almost bedridden, appointed, among others, his kinsman, Roderigo Borgia (after Alexander VI.), as Cardinal. To this ambitious and intriguing man Æneas attached himself, and bade farewell to Germany and his royal patron.

It was shortly before this that he began to devote all his energy and eloquence to preaching a new crusade against the Turks, whose conquest of Constantinople and succeeding inroads into Europe began seriously to alarm the civilised world. It was the only question which roused the old Pope to eagerness and determined him to invest the eloquent advocate as Cardinal in spite of bitter opposition from the Sacred College, who dreaded his keen intelligence. Though the architectural drawing, as usual, is good, the flat wall with two white windows has a bad effect. The altar is loaded with heavily embossed gilding; the groups behind are confused, and the figure of Æneas himself is lacking in dignity and distinction. In the foreground stand[131] two Greek patriarchs, whose presence is intended to convey their satisfaction at the elevation of their champion and that of the cause of Christendom.

We now find the Cardinal of Siena working his way to the Papal throne. He had a powerful friend in Cardinal Borgia, with whom he was engaged in anything but reputable transactions in benefices, by which he contrived to amass sufficient wealth; but besides this he really worked hard in the cause of the Church, and his courtly manners and attractive personality, as well as his real kindliness, won him many friends. When the old Calixtus died, in August 1458, he was ready to come forward, and has left us a striking account of the incidents of the election. His only rival was the Cardinal Archbishop of Rouen, a Bourbon, rich and ambitious.

All the night before the election the principal of each party and his immediate supporters were holding secret meetings, passing from cell to cell with arguments and persuasion. When at length all met, pale and trembling with excitement, to deposit their votes in the chalice, Æneas was found to have nine votes and the Cardinal of Rouen six. Three Cardinals who had voted for another candidate were now to give casting votes. “Long the whole conclave sat in silence; the slightest rustle of a robe, the turn of a head, the movement of a foot, sent a thrill of anxiety round the whole circle. At last the fine figure of Roderigo Borgia was seen to rise. Amidst breathless stillness, he in the usual form declared that he acceded to the Cardinal of Siena.” After a short delay the two others followed, and thus,[132] at the age of fifty-three, Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini became Pope, by the title of Pius II.

The fresco seizes the moment when the Pope, borne through the aisles of St. Peter’s, is stopped, according to ancient usage, by the Master of the Ceremonies, who kindles a piece of tow dipped in spirit, and, as the light dies away, delivers the solemn warning, “Sancte Pater, Sic transit gloria mundi.” The Pope, under the baldacchino, heavy with armorial bearings, and wearing the dark-blue mantle which accorded with the colours of his house, lifts his gloved fingers solemnly in blessing. He is painted here as an older man, already worn with anxiety. In the foreground two figures in Oriental dress remind us that assistance against the Turk was the mission to which the newly-made Pope had specially pledged himself. St. Peter’s is, of course, the old basilica which was destroyed by Julius II.

Fresco VIII. “Congress at Mantua.” In pursuance of his proposed crusade, Pius II., in 1459, summoned the powers of Christendom to hold a congress at Mantua to consider the necessary measures. It lingered on for eight months, when war against the Sultan was formally declared, but gave occasion for more intrigues and self-seeking on the part of those assembled than for any real sacrifices for the cause. Pius II. is here represented directing the deliberations of the Congress. The person of distinction pleading with the Pope is said to be the Greek Patriarch, the envoys of the persecuted Eastern Christians are grouped in the foreground, Cardinals sit on the Pope’s right hand, and others—princes, ecclesiastics, and suppliants—form a [133]crowd behind. The arrangement of this scene is not happy. The figures are cut up in an awkward way and the perspective is questionable. It is redeemed by the airy arches and the charming landscape beneath them.

“A Sienese filling the Chair of St. Peter may well be the instrument to call a Sienese to sainthood, and that we do with holy joy.” So spoke Pius II. in pronouncing between the claims of three holy Virgins, Rosa of Viterbo, Francesca of Rome, and Catherine of Siena. The superior claims of St. Catherine have been fully acknowledged by history: her influence in healing the great schism of the Urbanists and the Clementists, her saintly life, her magnetic personality, are sufficient reasons without adding the miracles with which she was credited.

In fresco IX. the Pope is seated on the “high and well-appointed balcony,” which he had ordered should be erected in St. Peter’s, whence, after a discourse on her virtues, he might proceed to her solemn canonisation. The Cardinals are gathered round, the corpse of the saint lies at his feet, clad in the black and white of the Dominican order, her book upon her breast, and the lilies, which are her attribute, in her folded hands. Below stand a crowd of spectators bearing candles. In front is a long row of persons, said to be portraits. The first on the left we should guess to be Raphael, even without the traditional confirmation. Next him is Pintoricchio himself. The others have been variously named Andrea del Sarto, Fra Bartolommeo, etc. Steinmann suggests, with more probability, that one is intended for Eusebio di San Giorgio and another[134] for Bembo Romano, who were both working as assistants, especially as the initials of the last are to be discerned on several of the pilasters among the decorations. The composition in this scene is rather disjointed. The two halves do not seem to belong to each other, and it is curious to note the difference between the conventional arrangement of the groups in the background and the characteristic forms and much more structural figures which the painter has evidently drawn from the life. The effigy of St. Catherine is taken from her monument in Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. The Dominicans and Augustinians are prominent, as it was of their order that the saint was so great an ornament.

Pope Pius was one of the few Italians of that day in whom a great love for nature declared itself. Campana tells us of his visits to beautiful places, of his landscape gardening and planting, of his fondness for distant views, and for taking his food under the trees on some hill-side. It pleased him to chat with the peasants, to joke with his friends with “free and festive converse passing into moderate jest.” He loved to build and adorn in his native city, and for a time he seemed to be only a man of cultivated and artistic life and busy pleasures. But he had not forgotten his crusading enthusiasm, and as the news travelled to Rome of the repeated victories of the Turks, of the loss of Morea, Rhodes, Cyprus, and of the Moslem advance on every side, he laid before his Cardinals his resolve to take up a holy war, counting upon the Christian princes of Europe rallying to his support. He mediated between the different quarrelsome Powers, and signed a league by which he was to [135]meet the Venetians and an army of the Duke of Burgundy at Ancona; but the powers were half-hearted, only a small part of the promised forces arrived, and Ancona seems to have been a scene of rioting and mismanagement.

On June 18, 1464, the Pope, “an aged man with head of snow and trembling limbs,” raised aloft the Cross at the altar of St. Peter’s, and vowing himself to the service of Christendom, set forth for Ancona. “Farewell, Rome,” he cried, as his barge passed down the Tiber, “living thou shalt never see me more.” He was very ill with fever, but the high spirit that had helped him all through life, did not forsake him. The weather was broiling hot, and the Pope suffered greatly on the journey. He was a month reaching Ancona, and had the added discouragement of meeting bands of deserting crusaders on the way. No ships had arrived from Venice, and when at last they appeared, the soldiers they were to embark had nearly all melted away. Pius realised at length that the undertaking had come to naught. Ill, disappointed, heartsick, he remained at Ancona, and when the Venetian fleet appeared, after long delay, he could just bear to be lifted to a window to see the long-watched-for sails.

The Doge, who accompanied the fleet, would not at first believe in the reality of the Pope’s illness, and sent his physician to see if he were not feigning in order to escape the necessity of setting forth, but the end was near. It was at sunset on the 12th of August that the Venetian ships entered the harbour; at sunset on the 14th the Pope passed away. By his death he escaped the misery of failure; the attempt came to a natural[136] end, and Pius was surrounded with a halo of martyrdom and heroism—not all undeserved, for, unsuccessful as he was, he yet was the only potentate who made any effort to stem the power of the infidel, and his unsupported struggle and baffled aspirations form a pathetic close to his active and successful life.

In the fresco there is no hint of the sad and wasted moments. Pintoricchio’s part was to glorify and dignify the memory of the Pope, and to please the house of Piccolomini. The Pope is raised on high and borne forward by his followers. In front, dressed in gold brocade, kneels Christoforo Morea, the Doge of Venice. On the opposite side kneels a Turk, and another fierce-looking Oriental stands behind him. These may be recollections of Djem and his followers, whom Pintoricchio had already painted in the Borgia rooms. Behind lie the town and harbour of Ancona, with the Venetian fleet anchored in the bay.

There only remained for Pintoricchio to leave a memorial of the coronation of the second Pope of the House of Piccolomini, and this is placed over the door of the Library. It is something like the “Canonisation of St. Catherine,” in the way in which it is divided into two parts. The perspective is not well managed. The Pope and the two Cardinals who assist him to place the mitre on his head, have the effect of a picture background to the busy scene below, and the long rows of white-mitred bishops give a very inartistic impression. Below them is a crowd of spectators, of all ages and both sexes—the whole confused and not well drawn, and there is an unfortunate lack of proportion between the different figures.

The frescoes have been much retouched, though, on the whole, they are in wonderful preservation. Where the yellows and blues have been most repainted the effect is hard and glaring; but where the same colours are not meddled with, as in the Pope’s blue robe, and that of the Doge of No. X., Elizabeth’s robe, and the King’s mantle in the meeting of the bridal pair, and in most of the pinks and rose-reds, the tones are much softer and more pleasing. Only in the hall itself can we appreciate the way in which the open-air and indoor scenes are arranged and balanced and the architectural setting worked in so as to give lightness and distinction. The line of sight is high, about two-thirds of the way up the picture; this to some extent places the spectator in a wrong position, but the whole goes back, so that, far from being oppressed with a feeling of covered walls, a sense of space and withdrawal is conveyed that enlarges the room in a marvellous manner.

The repose of the hall in its entirety is very striking; hardly a figure is in anything like violent action, all move and stand with quiet dignity, all the movement takes place well within the picture, and the extraordinarily clever use made of the sky, ceiling, floor, and wide retreating background, give us breath and air, and a sense of delight and freedom. In as many as eight of these frescoes we have an enthroned figure, yet treated with what variety and absence of monotony. The first scene shows us a joyous youth setting out on a stormy journey; the last, an old man, pale and careworn, carried by loving friends, and behind him, an untroubled sea and the calm of sunset. The[138] ceiling is a curious mixture of sacred subjects and mythological ones, after the manner of that in the Colonna Palace, but not very appropriate to the Pope’s Chapel; sporting of fauns and nymphs, Cupid riding on a green dolphin, grotesques, recalling the choir of Santa Maria del Popolo, but richer in colour and more delicately harmonised. The dark oak, the blue and white-tiled floor, with the yellow crescent of the Piccolomini, and the pilasters repeating the blue and white, are all part of the design, in which there is one guiding hand. It is all well adapted to give brightness to the long room, so slightly arched, and lighted only from one end. The room is so beautiful that it is hard to say that it is mechanical—yet assuredly there is something stiff and academic about it, some loss of grace and the joyous sense of creation, a feeling that the painter was growing old and tired, and that the childlike enjoyment of beauty was less keen. In the first fresco, whether we owe it to the young Raphael’s help or to the natural interest at starting, we recognise buoyancy and the love of experiment; and we have something of it again in the fairy-tale tableau, where the prince and the lady meet, but the colour has become gaudier and cheaper, the naïveté, the enchantment, the unconsciousness, have in some measure passed away, the tide of fancy is running lower, and it is now that we chiefly feel the lack of that well of science from which the artist can drink ever deeper as the years go by.

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[139] CHAPTER X

PANEL PAINTINGS

IT is difficult to arrange Pintoricchio’s pictures into distinct groups. He wandered backwards and forwards between Rome and Umbria for so many years, and his art, during the whole time, though showing variations, never undergoes any radical change or development. He arrived early at a point which satisfied his employers, and there he remained. He did not attempt to try experiments, or to unravel new problems. He was almost always engrossed by great undertakings, and had little time to think of anything beyond getting them creditably executed in a given time.

“La préoccupation d’être original n’empêchait pas de dormir, encore moins de travailler, les artistes d’alors. Leur personalité ne s’élaborait que sur le tard, quand ils réussissent sans le chercher beaucoup à le faire éclore.”[32]

This constant employment on fresco accounts for the small number of panel paintings he has left, nor do we hear of more than one or two, other than those which have come down to us. I have already noticed the “St. Christopher” and the “Madonna” in the Gallery at Valencia. His finest work in tempera is the great [140]polyptych or ancona, painted in 1498 for the monks of Santa Maria dei Fossi, and which is an extraordinarily dainty piece of work. The heavily-gilt framework is divided into compartments. In the central one the Madonna is enthroned, the Child sits upon a little cushion on her knee, half-draped in a striped and brocaded mantle. With one hand He offers the mystic pomegranate to His mother, with the other grasps a jewelled cross, held by the little St. John Baptist, who, with his cloak clasped upon the breast, sandals on his feet, his eyes uplifted in devotion, strides forward, with the air of one starting on a pilgrimage. This attractive little figure is borrowed from the Bernardino Mariotto, with whom Pintoricchio was so often confused. The Virgin’s eyes are cast down, and both her face and that of the Child are rather expressionless.

The upper part of the framework is filled by a Pietà, which nearly equals the middle panel in size and importance. The half-length of the dead Christ is draped with a striped cloth, above the open tomb. It is reminiscent of Perugino’s beautiful Pietà in the same Gallery. The hands have the backs turned outwards, displaying the palms instead of the backs, as the northern painters usually represent them. The arms are supported by angels, who are adapted from the over-door by Fiorenzo in the Sala del Censo. The pathetic figure of the Saviour is the most satisfactory rendering of the nude that Pintoricchio produced. The muscles are carefully modelled, the flesh is firmly painted, and the touch of the angels convincing, the group is full of repose, sad dignity, and [141]refinement. The Angel and Virgin of the “Annunciation” on either side are a reduced replica of those in the Borgia Apartments and at Spello. Though painted in tempera, this work is extremely full and vivid in colour, almost resembling oils, and is executed throughout with minute delicacy.

The contract is dated February 14, from the house of Diamantis Alphani de Alphanis. “Messer Bernardino de Benedecto of Perugia—il Pintoricchio, for himself and his heirs, promises and agrees with Brother Jerome of Francesco, Venice, Sindico and Procurator of the Frate Capitulo and Convent of Santa Maria dei Fossi, de Porta San Pietro, to paint an altar-piece over the high altar of the said church with the here inscribed figures. The picture divided into parts: in the major part the image of our most glorious Lady with the Child. On the right side of our Lady, the figure of the glorious San Agostino in pontifical habit, and in the left place, San Girolamo in cardinal’s habit. Above the middle shall be a Pietà, and on either side the Angel and Our Lady of the Annunciation. Above, and in front, the transmission of the Holy Spirit to the Annunciation. In the predella of this picture shall be painted eighteen figures. In the first place, on one side, San Baldo, San Bernardino, in canonicals. In a row the Pope and five cardinals in state, with five brothers at their feet. All ornamented—to taste—with gold and colours, at the charge of Messer Bernardino, who also promises, in the background of these pictures, to paint a landscape, etc.”

Though the contract was drawn up, the master,[142] strong in the sense of his value to the Papal Court, postponed its execution to his own convenience. With his fame at its height, he was called upon in all directions. The Council of Orvieto saw the moment was come for securing the finishing of the fresco for which they had been waiting for four years. On his way back from Perugia, Pintoricchio once more took up his work in their cathedral, under a fresh contract to add the two doctors to the two evangelists. There thus to-day remain traces of a St. Mark and a St. Gregory on the right hand of the choir, and traces of one or two angels so restored as to have lost all character, but for which the work of the Umbrian master has doubtless served as foundation. The sum he agreed to take in payment in March was fifty ducats, and the convent books record November 1496 as the date of the last payment.

In the obscure little town of San Severino in the Marches, we find another altar-piece which was probably produced about the same time. No record of its acquisition is to be found in the archives of the cathedral, though an accurate account is kept of commissions executed about this period by Bernardino Mariotto, and others. It is remarkable that, considering Pintoricchio’s fame in his lifetime, such a possession as an altar-piece from his hand should have remained unchronicled. It seems most likely that it was produced at Perugia, and found its way later to its present position in the sacristy. However this may be, we must rejoice over this unmistakable and charming example of his art, well preserved and not very much retouched. It is the least known of [143]all his pictures; it has only recently been photographed, and, from the position of San Severino, far off the beaten track, is not easily visited.

The “Madonna della Pace” wears a blue mantle lined with a rich shade of green, and a rose-red dress. She bends over the Child, who, clad in white with a grey and gold drapery, stands on a little cushion on her knee. He holds a transparent glass ball in His left hand, and with the other blesses the donor, who kneels on the right, dressed in a scarlet robe. An angel with hands crossed on the breast bends towards the Child, while another stands with folded hands behind the Mother. Behind is a spring landscape, a town, and the usual rocky archway with a cavalcade passing under it.

The face of the Madonna in this painting is indescribably soft, young, and tender (even a good photograph does not do it justice). The face and figure of the Child are full of expression; the angels are exquisite types, reminding us of Lorenzo di Credi. The Cardinal-donor is a man in the prime of life, with a firmly-drawn face, brown complexion, and strongly-marked features. The face is rendered with great care, the vein in the temple, every mark and wrinkle, the neck of one past youth, are observed, and as a portrait the head compares well with the painter’s best efforts. The colour of the panel is gay yet tender. The faces have an exquisite transparency, with melting shadows. The face of the angel in the background is entirely in luminous shade. The little landscape is delicately finished. The fine, decisive drawing, and the feeling, simple and unstrained, show[144] Pintoricchio at his best. In retouching, the face of the donor has been thrown out against a dark ground, which somewhat impairs the effect.

The “Madonna” in the Museum at Naples is a full-length figure standing on the clouds, surrounded by a mandorla of cherubs, flanked by six angels playing musical instruments, who recall those in the Buffalini Chapel. The group below of the apostles, St. Thomas kneeling in front, clasping the sacred girdle, is strongly reminiscent of Perugino, as in the background, where the favourite features of Fiorenzo have for once been abandoned.

The “Head of a Boy” at Dresden must, I think, be an early work, when Perugino’s manner was felt in all its freshness. Though the hair is hard and wiry, and not worthy of the rest, the morbidezza and elastic plumpness of youthful flesh are given by very subtle modelling, and the moody, young face is treated with most delicate tonality. The landscape and receding distance and tall slender trees are in Perugino’s style.

The “Madonna and Child,” in the National Gallery, I take to be a very early work. It is dry and thin, with a hard black line outlining the flesh, a peculiarity of which Pintoricchio is not often guilty. The landscape is hard and dull in treatment, and the expression of both Mother and Child is formal and precise. The figures and the Virgin’s hands are stiff. It cannot stand comparison with the beautiful group in the Borgia Hall of Arts and Sciences, and hardly with the much more freely handled “St. Catherine of Alexandria, with a Donor,” which hangs beside it.[145] This last, probably painted during the early part of his stay at Siena, judging by the glimpses of scenery and the likeness of the St. Catherine to the maid in the fresco of the Baptistery, is good in colour, painted with a fuller brush and more viscous medium.

Away from the sumptuous surroundings of the capital, back among the plains and mountains of Umbria and Tuscany, he returns to a simpler manner. The little altar-pieces at Spello are suitable to small parish churches. They have something homely in their character. The “Madonna” in the little panel in Santa Maria Maggiore has a gentle, rustic countenance, and no embroidery on her mantle. The Child is quite undraped. The Madonna in the larger panel is very beautiful, and is more akin in face and the whole treatment to the figures personating the Arts and Sciences in the Vatican, but has none of the painter’s usual richness of ornament. In San Andrea, the neighbouring church of the ex-Minorites, hangs the large altar-piece which Pintoricchio was painting in 1508 when Gentile Baglioni summoned him to return to Siena. The Madonna is raised on a throne which recalls the niches in which the Arts in the Borgia Apartments and the sibyls in the Baglioni Chapel are placed. The Child stands on her knee, clasping her neck. St. Andrew, with his cross, stands by St. Louis of Toulouse; opposite are St. Francis and St. Laurence grasping his gridiron; a little St. John sits on the step on the middle. On a carelessly-drawn wooden stool in the foreground lies the letter of Cardinal Baglioni, legibly copied; other small objects lie about—a knife and scissors, an ivory[146] seal, a bottle of ink and a pencase—on the step by St. John. It is the only “Santa Conversazione” Pintoricchio ever painted. The figures are weak and unstructural, and we recognise the repetition of old types in the saints and angels. The little St. John is bright and attractive. The idea of his figure is borrowed from Mariotto, who, though poor in colouring and draftsmanship, was original in finding motifs, and supplied Raphael with many, as well as his immediate contemporaries.

The “Coronation” in the Vatican was painted about 1505 for the nuns of La Fratta (Umbertide). Only the upper part is believed to be by the master’s hand. Among the most beautiful of the Madonna paintings is the “Assumption,” executed during the later years at Siena for the monks of Monte Oliveto, and now at San Gemignano. The Madonna in this is an exquisite creation. She sits on high, surrounded by cherubs, with a lovely smiling landscape behind her, and is in Fiorenzo’s style. Her face is sweet and expressive, and the colour of the whole is soft, with rosy pinks and delicate greens of spring. Below kneels a Pope with his tiara on the ground, and a bishop in a white robe clasping his pastoral staff. The foreground is dark and rich, and contrasts with the clear and lovely tones beyond.

Another thoroughly satisfactory work is the little panel painted for the nuns of Campansi, and now in the Accademia at Siena. It is a small tondo, in the painter’s most naïve and charming manner. Joseph and Mary sit side by side, in a flowery meadow. He holds a barrel of wine and a loaf. She has a book [147]on her knee, but is turning to speak to the two children—St. John in his little camel-hair garment, and the Christ-Child dressed in a white dress falling to the feet. The two children are represented arm-in-arm, carrying books and a pitcher, and are wandering away from the side of their elders. So poetic and innocent is their aspect, they recall the old legend of the little St. Teresa and her brother going out into the world to seek martyrdom. The figure of the Divine Child, with long fair hair falling round the face, and exquisitely drawn baby hands and feet, is one of the sweetest imaginable. Mary’s head is uncovered—a very rare variation with Pintoricchio. The folds of the draperies are unusually large and simple. The composition, the delicate restraint of gesture, combined with natural feeling, are very striking in this delightful little painting. Dr. Steinmann reminds us that Raphael may have seen it when he visited Siena, and it may be remotely responsible for his Madonna groups, seated in the fields, the idyllic feeling of which it certainly foreshadows.

In the “Reliquary” at Berlin, the figures of the saints are too short. The heads are of a type which had become rather hackneyed, but the angels are lightly and crisply drawn, and it is a solid little work. The other panel at Berlin, a “Madonna and Child,” is not ascribed without dispute to Pintoricchio. Neither the face of the Mother nor the figure of the Child recall his manner, and while it is most unusual for him to paint the Virgin’s head without the shading veil, the hair here is dressed in the Italian fashion of the time, as nowhere else in his works. The Child’s feet and[148] the Mother’s hands, however, essentially remind us of Pintoricchio; the draperies have his lines, and the gouged-out folds we find in some of his later panels, and we see the peculiar, dainty touch of fingers, holding Child and globe as if they were eggshells.

The “Madonna and Saints” of the Louvre, which Mr. Berenson assigns to Pintoricchio, Dr. Steinmann believes to be by the same painter who helped him with the “Descent of the Spirit” in the Vatican. The heads certainly differ widely from Pintoricchio’s type, but if we apply Morelli’s test, the very peculiar left hand is reproduced line for line, in the Penelope of the Petrucci fresco. Notwithstanding, it is difficult to believe this to be a genuine work of the master. The little panel in the Pitti (the “Adoration of the Magi”) is much too feeble to be anything but an imitation, and the Virgin and Child are entirely unlike his type. The others of his works which are not questioned are a “Madonna and Cherubs” at Buda-Pesth; “St. Michael,” Leipzig; a “Madonna and a Crucifix” at Milan; “St. Augustine and two Saints” at Perugia. Mr. Berenson gives him a “God the Father” at Santa Maria degli Angeli, near Assisi, and (doubtfully), the “Portrait of a Boy” at Oxford.

His last known work is the very beautiful little panel in the Palazzo Borromeo at Milan. This was painted at Siena in the last year of his life, and is full of force and colour, glowing like a jewel. The background has an interesting effect of distant sunset behind trees and mountains; all the notice is concentrated on the red-robed figure and white cross of the Christ. The greens [149]of the ground and the lengthening shadows give a more than usual depth and harmony. The group behind is confused and less well-drawn, but the peasant leading the way is evidently a study from life. On the arabesque in which the painting is set is a cartel inscribed with name and date.

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Although Pintoricchio’s art was so much admired during his lifetime, it is difficult to show that it exercised much after-influence. Fascinating as it is in some ways, it represents the last survival of a dying school. The world to which he belonged, the taste which delighted in his creations, disappeared with him, and was replaced by an age of conscious modernism which was eager to sweep aside all that seemed archaic in the immediate past. The thirst for knowledge and for scientific research was waxing intense, and the craze for the display of knowledge with its hidden seeds of decay soon followed. Among his pupils, Matteo Balducci, who we know from Vasari worked with him in Rome, has left several pictures at Siena. These are all Umbrian in treatment, and show the influence of Pintoricchio, but they lack his delicate drawing; the forms are long and weak, and the colour dim and washy. Pietro di Domenico, a Sienese, has panels in imitation of him; but the most notable example of his influence is to be found in that series of the “Story of Griselda,” in the National Gallery, painted by an unknown artist, who, as Miss Cruttwell points out, was also influenced by Signorelli, and in whom sense of form and feeling for originality are more developed than in other[150] followers of the Umbrian master. Gerino da Pistoia is mentioned by Vasari as a friend of Pintoricchio, who worked much with him and Perugino, and an altar-piece by him at Pistoia has traces of both masters. Crowe and Cavalcaselle see his co-operation in the “Last Supper” in Sant’ Onofrio in Florence, and account thus for the signs it shows of Pintoricchio’s influence. Giovanni Bertucci of Faenza is another Umbrian whose pictures have often been attributed to Pintoricchio. The Mother and Child in the “Glorification” by him in the National Gallery are not unlike our master’s in Sant’ Andrea at Spello. We can trace many suggestions afforded to Raphael. The “Dispute” in the Borgia Apartments in all probability bent Raphael’s mind to the conception of the “Disputa” in the Stanze, and inspired the idea of his beautiful classic and sacred medallions set in decorative framework, and of the enthroned figures of Music, Theology, and the rest; and the use made by Pintoricchio of architectural interiors may have first inspired the supreme setting of the “School of Athens.”

Down to recent years Pintoricchio was quite overlooked or treated with contempt, and for the purely scientific school he has still little merit. He certainly is not able to inspire that sort of interest that we feel in painters who worked, looking backward to see what had been done, and forward to discover what yet remained to do. We do not strive with him and triumph with him over defeated difficulties. He was a craftsman, as were all artists worthy of the name at that day, and his work is always painstaking and [151]adequate, with nothing sloppy or careless in its execution; but painting as a craft, with its secrets and its possibilities, was not his first object, so that, without being able to divide his work into any distinct periods, we find that his earlier life, when he was still learning, was on the whole the time when he was most successful in the artistic sense; and in such frescoes as the “Journey of Moses” and the “Life of San Bernardino” he gives promise of an excellence which is not afterwards adequately realised. He was an illustrator, and as such, perhaps, never touched the highest side of painting. We find in him the natural tendency of a decorator who undertakes large commissions as a matter of business, to repeat forms and situations; yet, with every temptation to mechanical treatment and repetition, it is the true artist in Pintoricchio which saves him from becoming monotonous. To the very last, as in the “Return of Ulysses,” or the “Holy Family” at Siena, his invention and fancy are alert, varying every accessory, displaying a freshness and an enjoyment in his creations which are irresistibly attractive. In all his illustration the lyric faculty is his. He follows the lives, the history, the fashions of his time with minute persistence, but always with some charm added to prosaic actuality. He is to painting what the ballad-singer is to poetry: slight, garrulous, naïve, infectious, he has a haunting melody of his own, and through his eyes we watch the widening of one aspect of that golden day.

[153] Ruskin speaks of the value to us of the impression made by a scene upon the mind of the artist; it is[152] the impression stamped by the strange and enchanting grace of that world of the Renaissance upon one man, and handed on by him with spontaneity and undoubting delight, which is so precious to us in his work.

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[167] INDEX

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