Pintoricchio Part 6

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 a.s.sistants, his _garzoni_, together, and moved his household goods to Siena.

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

The work was stopped for a time, but fortunately for Pintoricchio and for posterity the contract had contained a clause binding the Cardinal "in his goods and heirs," as well as personally, to carry out the agreement. The Pontiff had also ratified this in his will, and his two brothers, acting as his executors, prepared to carry out his wishes.

Some unavoidable delay there was, and during this time Pintoricchio, being absolved for the time being from the promise to take no other commissions, applied himself to various works for rather more than a year.

The chief among these was the decoration of the beautiful little chapel dedicated to St. John the Baptist in the cathedral at Siena. Its frescoes were the gift of Alberto Aringhieri, a Knight of Rhodes, who has had his portrait as a young man painted on one side of the door and in advancing years on the other. The other frescoes have been entirely repainted, excepting the one of the "Birth of St. John," and on this, which has been much retouched, it is so evident that two hands have worked that I do not believe Pintoricchio himself painted any part except the maid, and possibly the Infant. The maid is drawn with a much stronger and more precise touch than any of the rest, and instead of the veil or drapery with which he usually covers the heads of his sacred personages, she has an Italian dress and headgear, with loops and bows.

The same model has served for her face and head as for the "St.

Catherine" in the National Gallery, and apparently both are from life.

The interest of the chapel centres in the two portraits of the donor, and both these go to increase the painter's reputation. The young knight keeping his vigil, in full panoply, his plumed helm and steel gauntlets lying by his side, the great white cross of St. John of Jerusalem upon his crimson surcoat, is a creation full of chivalrous fancy. The old knight, kneeling opposite, in a dress of a dignitary of the cathedral, and a black skull cap, is a strong, well-drawn figure, well felt under the robes. Both are small in size and reserved in treatment. The backgrounds are full of detail, with buildings, meant to be Eastern, and palm trees. The colour of the figures is very harmonious--the soft greys of the armour, and the dull red of the scarf against it; all the links of the chain mail executed with the dainty care of a miniature. In both frescoes the light and dark are ma.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ces on the pavement of Siena Cathedral. The pavement of Siena is a remarkable production differing from any other work of art in existence; a mixture of _intaglio_ or engraving on stone, varied by _intarsia_ or inlay of marbles. The work had been long in progress, and designs for the various scenes had been furnished by artists from 1369 onwards. One painter of Umbrian extraction, Matteo di Giovanni, had already supplied his favourite subject of the "Murder of the Innocents." Pintoricchio's design is reproduced in the fourth s.p.a.ce as we walk up the nave. It is an allegory of the excellence of Wisdom and the folly of Pleasure. The sky is of pure black marble, the island of grey, the fields, the sea, and the figures of pale marble, engraved with dark lines and inlaying. In the middle sits Wisdom, crowned with flowers, and bearing a palm branch and a book. On one hand Socrates receives from her the palm; on the other a philosopher casts a collection of trinkets and baubles into the sea. On a lower plane, a company of pilgrims, the foremost of whom is presumably a portrait, climbs a path set with stones and thistles, and beset with serpents, lizards, a tortoise, and a snail. One sits down and falls asleep, another turns to shake his fist at Pleasure, a fair, naked woman, holding a cornucopia of flowers, and spreading a sail to catch the pa.s.sing breeze. One foot rests on the ball of Fortune, as she steps off the sh.o.r.e 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Lombardi photo_] [_Duomo, Siena_

THE 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 a further re-adjustment, and meant another period of delay, we may gather from finding that, in June 1505, Pintoricchio was once more in Rome. The ten months that followed must have been very busy ones, and no doubt the master, after the repeated hitches under his new patrons, was relieved to find himself once more working for those earlier ones in whose service he had always had good fortune.

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

The choir, which now absorbed him for some months, and which is the most perfectly preserved and the most untouched of all his works, is a wonderful piece of ceiling painting, in the style in which he had lately adorned the Library ceiling at Siena. In the middle a "Coronation of the Virgin" recalls Fiorenzo and, still more, Bernardino Mariotto, the Umbrian with whom Pintoricchio is so constantly confused. Round this middle octagon the four Evangelists alternate with four sibyls, and at each corner the four Fathers of the Church sit on thrones. The sibyls are graceful types of young Italian women of the Renaissance--full of sweetness and refinement--the women Messer Bernardino knew in the mannered and highly-cultured palaces: no beings of a weird and wild prophetic race. They half recline in the mapped-out divisions; each perfectly fills the s.p.a.ce without crowding, and a.s.sists the geometrical _coup d'il_ which 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 a _tondo_, St. Matthew with a beautiful angel holding the ink, and St.

Luke painting the portrait of the Virgin, are both singularly clear and excellent figures. The stately Fathers of the Church sit on throned seats like those of the Arts and Sciences, or the Sibyls at Spello.

Their robes ring the changes on beautiful dashes of colour--white, rich green and rose, scarlet and dark blue. The whole is set in a bold pattern of grotesques in gold and vivid colours, scrolls mounted by women's busts, quaint birds growing out of acanthus branches, _putti_ riding on griffins, and a score of other fantastic devices. The impression is at once gay, graceful, and distinguished, excellent in decorative effect, and delicate in detail.

[Ill.u.s.tration: [_Pavement, Siena Cathedral_

SYMBOLICAL 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 pa.s.s 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 cla.s.sical subjects, and of them there only remains "The Return of Ulysses," in the National Gallery. The fresco painting in this is rough and slight, the figures have little modelling, but are almost like patterns upon the background, the limbs of the suitors are unstructural even for Pintoricchio, yet the whole effect is charming. The head of the princ.i.p.al 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 att.i.tudes and relations of the figures are full of originality, and the uncompromising square of the window lets a flood of light and s.p.a.ce into the foreground, so full of action and movement.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Hanfstangl photo_] [_National Gallery, London_

THE RETURN OF ULYSSES TO PENELOPE]

CHAPTER IX

THE LIBRARY AT SIENA

Dr. Steinmann suggests, with great probability, that we may fix March as the month of Pintoricchio's return to Siena in 1506, for in that month he took into his employ the Perugian painter, Eusebio di San Giorgio.

This, no doubt, marks a fresh start, and the master now worked steadily on until the Library was completed.

There is little that is devotional in character about the Libreria in Siena. As the visitor pa.s.ses 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 dest.i.tute 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 aeneas Sylvius by his secretary Campana, as a guide to his choice of events, but careful examination has shown certain variations and deviations from this life, pointing to some other authority in use; and on comparison we find that he certainly also had recourse to the Pope's own memoirs, which supplied certain details and particulars not included in Campana's work.

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

[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 and _entrepreneur_ would adopt the designs of a young, untried painter. Vasari asks how we can suspect that the master of fifty would follow a twenty-year-old a.s.sistant: 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 a.s.sistant, had not he himself supplied several of the figures for Perugino's great work in the Sixtine?

The great probability of Raphael's being in Siena in 1502, when the designs for the cartoons would be making, is proved by his picture of the "Three Graces"--two of which are copied from the mutilated Greek group, one of the best specimens of the antique then known. This group was brought from Rome by the Cardinal, to place in his costly Library.

Vasari speaks of the _Cardinal_ (not the Pope) as having brought it to the not quite finished Library, which would put the transit before September 1503. In the summer of 1502 the Cardinal made his last journey from Rome, and it was very likely then that he brought it back. An elaborate pencil sketch of it exists: opinions are divided as to which of the painters this was the work of, but Raphael's own picture is guarantee that he must have seen and been struck by the original. It has been argued that it is not absolutely necessary that the author of the drawings should have been in Siena, but their adaptability and suitability to the walls makes this most unlikely. Four drawings for the Library exist--one each in Florence and Perugia, one at Milan, and one at Chatsworth. They are drawn with Indian ink, and the two first touched with bistre and heightened with white.

The first, which deals with the "Journey to the Council of Basel," has a long inscription at the top. The handwriting of this, if compared with Raphael's letter to Domenico Alfani, or that to his uncle Simone Ciarla, is no doubt Raphael's own, and the same hand has made notes in other parts of the drawing. It is possible, but not very probable, that the a.s.sistant 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 aeneas 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 aeneas 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Private photo_] [_Gallery, Venice_

STUDY FOR FRESCO I.

(By Raphael)]

We gather from all these changes that the drawing did not exactly satisfy the painter who worked on it after it was transferred to the wall. It is, however, in the spirit and bearing of the whole that we see the greatest difference. In the drawing the artist has shaken off the stiff Perugian manner, has got at nature, and has found new ways of handling. The riders are strong and elastic; the page to the right is supple and natural, but in the fresco is twisted round into an ungainly att.i.tude. 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 s.n.a.t.c.hes 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 ma.s.ses. 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Alinari photo_] [_Library, Siena_

aeNEAS PICCOLOMINI ON HIS WAY TO THE COUNCIL AT 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. The _loggia_ in the background accords well with the style of Raphael's buildings. His taste for architectural backgrounds was quite as keen as that of Pintoricchio, and he had been in intimate relation with Bramante and with Luciano Lauranna, the architect, who was his kinsman, when he came to Perugia.

Certain details in this remind us of the _loggia_ of the Castle of Urbino, with which, of course, Raphael was well acquainted. What is most unlike Pintoricchio, and very characteristic of Raphael, in this fresco, is the concentration of interest, the way in which the attention is insensibly attracted to the princ.i.p.al 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 a.s.sistants, to use their various hands so that monotony is avoided, while imposing his own style sufficiently to produce a strikingly h.o.m.ogeneous impression.

Instead of fighting against the amalgamated proof that Raphael had some share in the work, we may picture to ourselves the friendship that we have reason to think existed between the older man and the versatile and tactful youth, whose talent for making friends with his elders never failed him. We can imagine the deep consultation with which they must have paced these floors, and pored over sketches and designs; and if we wanted an a.s.surance 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.