Bernardino Pinturicchio

“ As many are aided by fortune, without being endowed with extraordinary ability, so are there numbers of able men, on the contrary, who are constantly persecuted by an adverse destiny. From this we perceive clearly, that fortune’s favourite children are those who depend on her only, unaided by ability of any kind, for it pleases her to exalt such by her favour, as would never have made themselves known by means of their own merit, and of this we have an instance in Pinturicchio, of Perugia ”

“ Pinturicchio was invited to Siena, where he was employed by cardinal Francesco Piccolomini to paint the library which had been erected in the cathedral of that city by Pope Pius II. It is indeed true, that the sketches and cartoons for all [4] the stories which he executed in that place were by the hand of Raffaello da Urbino, then a youth, who had been his companion and fellow disciple with the above-named Pietro, whose manner had been perfectly acquired by RatFaello. One of these Cartoons is still to be seen in Siena, and some of the sketches, by the hand of Raffaello, are in our book. ”

“ Peter, the wood work and paintings of which were renewed some few years since by Pope Pius IV. In the same palace. Pope Alexander VI. caused Pinturicchio to decorate all the rooms inhabited by himself, together with the whole of the Torre Borgia, where the artist painted stories of the liberal arts in one of the rooms, and adorned all the ceilings with ornaments in stuccowork and gold: [16] but the methods now practised in stucco were not known at that time, and the above-mentioned ornaments are for the most part ruined. ”

“ 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 ”

“ In the panel where San Bernardino raises a youth from the dead, a child playing with a dog recalls Pintoricchio’s putti on the pilasters at Siena. The young man on the right in the same scene, is supple and gracefully draped; a contrast to the wooden movements and stiff draperies of his fellow-pages. Even better is the youth reasoning, in a repetition of the same miracle, with his hand upon his hip and a dark cap perched upon his rippled curls. ”

“ The face is well and strongly modelled, and the outline is simple and large. Sant’ Antonio of Padua on the opposite side, holding his flaring heart in token of burning love, is a feebler figure, and reminds us of some of Perugino’s weaker saints; but San Bernardino himself, in the midst, is full of striking individuality, and there is great simplicity and repose in the outlines of all three figures. Nowhere have more beautiful angels been painted. Pintoricchio has shaken himself out of the conventional slavery of Perugino. ”

“ And truly Pinturicchio has lavished colour on this splendid monument to the glories of the Humanist Pope, who was a typical expression of his age in everything, except in his great revival of the Middle Ages, when he tried to lead a crusade against the Turks. The room is full of sunlight and the sheen of gold and precious stones, and Pinturicchio seems to have caught the world in its morning, with gay youths and maidens walking on the flower-starred grass, and swift wild-geese high on the wing through the clear blue heavens. ”

“ In Spello's climbing streets, though she is poor and broken, we found treasures worthy of great temples, heirlooms stranded in the shipwreck of her wealth, like Santa Maria Maggiore's rich Renaissance doorway and thirteenth-century portal, and the exquisite holy water stoup in the nave, which was once a pagan altar.
But most of all Spello is Pinturicchio's city. Her peasants are the ghosts of his old people; in her streets we met the lovely fair-haired girls whom he was never weary of crowning as Madonna Mary. ”

“ This is the moment chosen for the fifth fresco, and [129] gives the artist every scope for lively action and gay and brilliant colouring. Æneas, standing between the King and his young bride, is still the most prominent figure. The ladies of her train are grouped around the Infanta, as the attendant maidens round Mary in many a version of the “Sposalizio.” Behind the Bishop stands a dignitary with a white cross on his breast, who we identify from Pintoricchio’s lately finished portrait in the Baptistry, as Alberto Aringhieri, the Knight of Rhodes. ”

“ Vermiglioli refers to a series of miniature paintings belonging to his family, which Orsini, in his researches into the history of Umbrian painting, had already mentioned as resembling Pintoricchio’s work, especially in the use made of architecture. At the time he was growing up there was a flourishing college of miniaturists in Perugia, which had reconstructed its statutes in 1436.
Vasari thus comments upon Bernardino: “Some are helped by fortune, without being much endowed by merit; ... ”

“ We possess several portraits of Pintoricchio from his own hand; all are sufficiently like one another, though painted at different periods of his life, to assure us that they were like the original. The first is in the fresco of the “Argument of St. Catherine,” in the Borgia Apartments. The painter at this time must have been about thirty-nine years old. His portrait certainly looks much younger ”

“ 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. ”

“ Pintoricchio never shows the ear in his female heads. In the men’s it is large, placed high, with the inner cartilage strongly defined. The hand has a short metacarpus and long fingers, the thumb well separated, and the little finger hooked in Fiorenzo’s manner. He paints with a full brush, and has a heavy, liquid touch in fresco, but in working in panel he shows a beautiful surface quality which oil painting could not surpass. ”

“ There is in the art of Pintoricchio a direct simplicity of expression and gesture that saves him from conventionality and cloying sweetness. His persons are not above criticism as far as technicalities are concerned, but they have in them this, that they are occupied and absorbed in the business in hand. You may fancy at first that they are artificial, but that is merely their environment; they themselves are simple, they do not pose or look upwards or out of the picture with an affected appeal for admiration. This quality gives to Pintoricchio a truthfulness where he lacks depth. ”

“ The heads certainly differ widely from Pintoricchio’s type, but if we apply Morelli’s test, the very peculiar left hand is reproduced line for line, in the Penelope of the Petrucci fresco. Notwithstanding, it is difficult to believe this to be a genuine work of the master. The little panel in the Pitti (the “Adoration of the Magi”) is much too feeble to be anything but an imitation, and the Virgin and Child are entirely unlike his type. The others of his works which are not questioned are a “Madonna and Cherubs” at Buda-Pesth; “St. Michael,” Leipzig; a “Madonna and a Crucifix” at Milan ”

“ He implored them to take it out of his sight and bring him one by Donato, declaring that if they did not take that one from before him he should die in despair, so greatly did the sight of ill-executed works of art excite him.
A POOR ARTIST KILLED BY A SIGHT OF GOLD (1513) .
Pinturicchio, a painter of Perugia, who had painted and decorated many churches, but without ever securing great profit to himself, was in his old days engaged to paint a picture of the Virgin at the convent of San Francesco, in Siena, and a room was appropriated to his use by the monks and given up to him entirely. ”

“ The Child is a very real little boy; He stands on a cushion, dressed in a little tunic, poring with pretty baby wisdom over His task, so natural and so busy, He adds one more to a long list of triumphs in a branch of art in which up to this time Pintoricchio had few rivals. This picture started Vasari on a fable that it was a portrait of Giulia Farnese and [87] her child, with the Pope kneeling as donor, but there is no trace of a third person. He may have confused it with the Xativà panel. ”

“ The dry and purely scientific student of the schools of Italy will find it more than easy to demonstrate Pintoricchio’s shortcomings: it is less simple to analyse the charm that triumphs in spite of them, and which gives keen pleasure to one side of the artistic nature. ”

“ During the autumn and winter of 1502 Pintoricchio was making his preparations for an undertaking which must occupy him for some years. We have no indication of any visit to Venice to buy colours; but he returned to Perugia, probably finished up certain panel paintings at this time, gathered his workmen and assistants, his garzoni, together, and moved his household goods to Siena.
In the spring of 1503 he was hard at work at the ceiling. In the middle we see the coat-of-arms of the Piccolomini family, as provided by the contract, surmounted by the Cardinal’s hat. ”

“ Pintoricchio’s part was to glorify and dignify the memory of the Pope, and to please the house of Piccolomini. The Pope is raised on high and borne forward by his followers. In front, dressed in gold brocade, kneels Christoforo Morea, the Doge of Venice. On the opposite side kneels a Turk, and another fierce-looking Oriental stands behind him. These may be recollections of Djem and his followers, whom Pintoricchio had already painted in the Borgia rooms. Behind lie the town and harbour of Ancona, with the Venetian fleet anchored in the bay. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is reminiscent of Perugino’s beautiful Pietà in the same Gallery. The hands have the backs turned outwards, displaying the palms instead of the backs, as the northern painters usually represent them. The arms are supported by angels, who are adapted from the over-door by Fiorenzo in the Sala del Censo. The pathetic figure of the Saviour is the most satisfactory rendering of the nude that Pintoricchio produced. The muscles are carefully modelled, the flesh is firmly painted, and the touch of the angels convincing, the group is full of repose, sad dignity, and [141] refinement. ”

“ Hitherto the Roman court had worn a semblance of ecclesiastical gravity.... Rome became more famous for pleasure than for piety.... The Rovere stock was hard to civilise.... Hitherto the Papacy had on the whole maintained a moral standard; for some time to come it tended to sink even below the ordinary level. The loss that was thus inflicted upon Europe was incalculable" (op. cit., vol. IV., p. 132-3) .
[*215] Pinturicchio was also among them; neither can Signorelli be called a Florentine. Dennistoun is (infra) mistaken in thinking that Pinturicchio did not work in the Sixtine Chapel. ”

“ The heads are all drawn with [105] delicacy and decision, and even now we can trace original, sharp, precise touches. The man behind with the lamb on his shoulders is in Pintoricchio’s simpler and earlier manner—a good sketch straight from the model. The angels on the clouds kneel stiffly, and the whole gives the impression of a very early work, which has been copied in some details for the later “Adoration of the Shepherds” in the Baglioni Chapel. The landscape, though much destroyed, still retains his characteristics. ”

“ In the remaining fresco of the “Assumption,” the composition is entirely Umbrian, and may be compared with that in Santa Maria del Popolo, and in the Vatican. In St. Thomas, and in the angels on the right, Schmarsow sees the style of Perugino, but that master was a protégé of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, and at this time was busied on work for his patron; in any case, he would not have been likely to take service under his old pupil. Of course, Pintoricchio must have had designs by him in his possession. ”

“ There exists no doubt at all. You see a little Pinturicchio. Note the gay bands of variegated patterns, the arabesques and fruits. Their hues have vanished, but their forms and certain mannerisms of the master are unmistakable. These dainty decorations were the sign manual of such quattrocento painters as Gozzoli and Pinturicchio; and to these men he, for whom these works of art were created, assigned the painting and adornment of the Vatican. ”

“ Pinturicchio was undoubtedly working in Rome as Perugino's assistant during this pontificate of Pope Sixtus. Crowe and Cavalcaselle say of this artist: "He was a Perugian by birth and education, had followed with moderate talent the lessons of Buonfigli and Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, and afterwards joined the atelier of Perugino. He had all the qualities that should be sought in a subordinate, and might have become indispensable to one who undertook large commissions and required an orderly superintendent for his apprentices. ”