[28]Gregorovius, vol. viii. part ii. p. 725.[29]Vasari, vol. iii. p. 500.[30]Gregorovius.Lucrezia Borgia, pp. 127, 128.
[28]Gregorovius, vol. viii. part ii. p. 725.
[29]Vasari, vol. iii. p. 500.
[30]Gregorovius.Lucrezia Borgia, pp. 127, 128.
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.
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 whichis 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 recollectionsof 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 havefallen 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.
Alinari photo] [Sta. Maria Maggiore, SpelloTHE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS
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 clothspread, 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 littleprie-dieuat 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 withdelicacy 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.
Alinari photo] [Sta. Maria Maggiore, SpelloTHE ANNUNCIATION: WITH PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST
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.
Alinari photo] [Sta. Maria Maggiore, SpelloPORTRAIT OF PINTORICCHIO
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 1495he 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 oblongspace 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, hisgarzoni, 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, andno 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 fromlife. 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 ofintaglioor engraving on stone, varied byintarsiaor 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 walkup 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.
Lombardi photo] [Duomo, SienaTHE KNIGHT OF ARINGHIERI
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 afurther 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 geometricalcoup d’œilwhich is the first impression of the ceiling in its entirety, yet the pose of each is extremely easy and unconstrained,and the lines soft and flowing. Of the Evangelists, each painted in atondo, 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,puttiriding 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.
[Pavement, Siena CathedralSYMBOLICAL SCENE
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, thelimbs 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.
Hanfstängl photo] [National Gallery, LondonTHE RETURN OF ULYSSES TO PENELOPE
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 thislife, 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.
[31]Raphael und Pinturicchio in Siena.
[31]Raphael und Pinturicchio in Siena.
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 andentrepreneurwould 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.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 theCardinal(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 thewalls 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.
Private photo] [Gallery, VeniceSTUDY FOR FRESCO I.(By Raphael)
We gather from all these changes that the drawing didnot 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.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,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.
Alinari photo] [Library, SienaÆNEAS PICCOLOMINI ON HIS WAY TO THE COUNCIL OF BASEL
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. Theloggiain 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,who was his kinsman, when he came to Perugia. Certain details in this remind us of theloggiaof 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. Wecan 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 scholarFidelfo, 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 hewas 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 easyattitude. 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 lakesand 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, openpiazza, with the noble flight of steps leading up to theloggiaand 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 ofGermany on the question of the Papacy, not a single ecclesiastic appears in the crowd.