Pintoricchio Part 4

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 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 a.s.sistant may be seen. The latter recall Signorelli, without his force and freshness.

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

ST. ANTHONY AND ST. PAUL--HERMITS]

In "The Visitation," which fills the remaining s.p.a.ce 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 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.

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

THE DEMON WOMEN (Detail from the fresco of "St. Anthony and St. Paul")]

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 ma.s.s of ruined brickwork on Mount Palatine, is a pathetic figure, full of calm dignity and 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.

[25] In the British Museum is a drawing for this figure, attributed to Gentile Bellini, about which I shall have more to say.

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 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.

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

THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. SEBASTIAN]

We now turn to the princ.i.p.al 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 a.s.semblage, the fair little figure stands before the throne of the Emperor and ill.u.s.trates 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 as she was, the painter may have caught the idea of his composition from seeing her foremost in lively discussion among the n.o.bles 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.

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

THE DISPUTE OF ST. CATHERINE]

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 Renaissance is unheeding of him. This interesting attribution is now questioned by some authorities.

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

ST. CATHERINE (A detail from the "Dispute of St. Catherine")]

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]

[26] _L'Arte_, vol. i. p. 32.

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 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 a.s.sistants, whom he commissioned to procure sketches.

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

GROUP OF HEADS (A detail from the "Dispute of St. Catherine")]

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 Chronicles of the time, the letters and diaries of Amba.s.sadors, 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 Caesar 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 s.p.a.ces between the bars of framework ill.u.s.trate the myth of Osiris and Isis which, with its history of the deification of the bull, appropriately symbolises the exaltation of the House of 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 nave 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 cla.s.sic 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 princ.i.p.al subjects is in Pintoricchio's style and full of fancy and invention, but the execution would seem to have been entrusted to a.s.sistants, apparently to the same hand which worked on the archers round St. Sebastian and in parts of the Susanna.

CHAPTER VI

THE BORGIA APARTMENTS--CASTEL SANT' ANGELO

As he pa.s.sed through the doorway which leads into the Hall of the Arts and Sciences, Pintoricchio found above his head a narrow s.p.a.ce 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 att.i.tude 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 Xativa, 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 her child, with the Pope kneeling as donor, but there is no trace of a third person. He may have confused it with the Xativa panel.

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

GENERAL VIEW OF THE HALL OF LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES]

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 s.p.a.cing of the great octagon and the ingenuity of the divisions of the architraves complete a thoroughly harmonious effect. The Borgia crest re-appears with 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 s.p.a.ces has for its prevailing object of interest the single figure of a woman, and relief from monotony depends upon the appropriate figures 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 unimpa.s.sioned eyes. Unfortunately this beautiful hall has suffered more than any other, and several of the frescoes are almost destroyed by damp and restoration.

[27] These thrones, each with a single figure, resemble the ones in the series of Virtues painted by Pollaiuolo and Botticelli for Lorenzo dei Medici. Pintoricchio may have had a description of these.

"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 princ.i.p.al 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 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.

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

THE MADONNA AND CHILD, WITH ANGELS]

"Geometry" holds her square and compa.s.ses, 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-gla.s.s. 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 ma.s.sed with an eye to effect which is quite absent from the rest.