Pintoricchio Part 3

This plan of small landscapes and scenes set in a wide framework of fantastic objects, cla.s.sic 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 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 inst.i.tuted 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, subst.i.tuted. 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 Ba.s.so 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 a.s.sign 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 "Pieta"

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 "Pieta"

over the polyptych at Perugia. The coa.r.s.e, heavy body of the Christ, the badly-draped loin cloth, the clumsy att.i.tude 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 "a.s.sumption," 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 Cavalcaselle were the first to suggest as its author Matteo Balducci, a painter who has left several panels at Siena, which were for long a.s.signed 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 Cli, while the influence of Fiorenzo has re-a.s.serted 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 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 a.s.signed to him among others 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.

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, gra.s.sy court outside, you realise the setting of the pa.s.sionate 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 Caesar 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 s.p.a.ced 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, and the Abbe 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 a.s.sembled 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.

[23] _Nuova descrizione del Vaticano_, ii. 58.

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 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, _already painted by Pintoricchio_. Taking off this room, there remain five, to which he a.s.signed 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 princ.i.p.al parts with his own hand. We can gather from the existing work that Pintoricchio performed his share of such a contract honestly; a.s.sistants were evidently and inevitably employed, but the h.o.m.ogeneous 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 square, not very high rooms are s.p.a.ced, 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 cla.s.sic, 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 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 mediaeval 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 a.s.sumption 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 mediaeval 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 peac.o.c.k-blues and greens of Mary's garments, the rose-wreath, the lilies, make a luscious combination of colour. It is the impa.s.sionate character, the childlike and unconscious spirit of all Pintoricchio's creations that gives them such a piquancy, in contrast to their splendid setting.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Anderson photo_] [_Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome_

THE ANNUNCIATION]

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 a.s.sistants belonged, and his a.s.signments, 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 princ.i.p.al 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 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 Caesar 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 att.i.tude 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 of the Sienese, Bernardino Fungai, and by the same hand as the prophets on the roof nearest the window.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Anderson photo_] [_Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome_

POPE ALEXANDER VI. ADORING THE RISEN CHRIST]

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 s.p.a.ces, 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 "a.s.sumption," 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 _protege_ 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, facing St. Thomas. This figure alone, in grandeur and simplicity of att.i.tude, 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 Frances...o...b..rgia, the Pope's brother, who, in 1493 became Bishop of Teano, and Papal treasurer.[24]

[24] E. Steinmann, _Pintoricchio_, p. 54.

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, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Anderson photo_] [_Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome_

FIGURE OF THE POPE (A detail from "Pope Alexander VI. adoring the Risen Christ")]

A marble doorway surrounded by two _putti_ bearing a shield, leads to the Hall of Saints. Here Pintoricchio has surpa.s.sed 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Alinari photo_] [_Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome_

THE KNEELING MAN (A detail from the "a.s.sumption of the Virgin")]

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 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 att.i.tude, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Anderson photo_] [_Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome_

THE STORY OF SUSANNA]

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 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 nave 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.