_Pietro Perugino and the Cambio_[85]
The name of Perugia is naturally connected with that of Pietro Vannucci
_detto il Perugino_, or, as he preferred to sign himself, _Petrus de
Castro Plebis_, who stamped the peculiar personality of his painting
upon a whole school of Renaissance Italian art. Vannucci was by no means
the first artist of the Umbrian school, but he was the man who brought
it into general notice, and it was in the city of Perugia that he lived
and worked, and had his school of painting.
The best of Perugino's work, however, with the exception of his frescoes
in the Cambio, is not to be found in his native town. The indefatigable
Napoleon had a profound admiration for Pietro's altar-pieces. He sought
them out, he insisted on getting every inch of them, down to their
smallest predellas, and the splendid pictures of S. Pietro, S. Lorenzo,
and S. Agostino went over the Alps to swell his galleries in the
Tuileries. The frescoes of the Cambio could not go, and they at least
remain exactly as the master painted them. To understand the man Pietro
as well as the artist, we must study in the Cambio, for there his
portrait hangs face to face with a whole set of his frescoes, and the
contrast of the painter's face and the faces he invariably gave to his
saints is almost as strange as that between the Umbrian saints and the
history of the times in which they lived and worked.
To understand the painters of Perugia one must understand the period in
which they were produced. One wonders whether Vasari reckoned at all
with this when he wrote his life of Perugino. The Florentine was not
particularly just to Umbrian painters in general, and of Pietro Vannucci
he paints a very unsympathetic portrait. He accuses him of two great
faults: avarice and irreligion, and these have become so inevitably
connected with Pietro's name that it is not easy to dispute them. Yet,
if not absolutely false, the facts have been grossly exaggerated.
Concerning the first--avarice--Vasari maintains that Pietro painted
exclusively for the sake of gain, and never for that of art or faith.
This accusation has been disproved by later writers in so far as the
early life of Perugino is concerned. We hear, for instance, that he
painted several banners for his native city in the time of plague and
war, that he asked no money for them, and when the time of need was past
he took them back and kept them in his studio. Also, merely as an
amusing anecdote, Vasari himself tells us that Pietro could open his
purse for the woman he loved, and dress her in the fairest and the
costliest clothes, setting the pins and folds himself upon her headgear.
In the latter part of his life, which was not without some shadow, he
did paint for money, allowing soulless pictures to pass from his studio
to the altars of believing monks and ladies; but his best work belongs
to his earliest period, and there is no reason to believe that it was
uninspired save by the inspiration of gold.
Concerning the second accusation--lack of faith--we have dealt with it
at the end of Pietro's life, and we can only add here that the man must
have been of super-human gentleness who could live through the scenes
that Vannucci lived through, and maintain the faith of childhood.
The portrait in the Cambio is a stumbling block. The expression is heavy
and unspiritual. This fact jars, and we resent it. (See frontispiece.)
But whatever Pietro's appearance, whatever his personal character may
have been, he did two things: he left behind him an enduring mark in the
history of art, and he gave the soul to that considerable school of
painting from which young Raphael went forth into the wondering world,
together with a host of other painters whose tendency was entirely in
the direction of the spiritual and purifying elements in human life.
* * * * *
Away to the southwest of Perugia, above the lakes of Trasimene and
Chiusi, with a wide view southwards towards Rome, and northwards to
Cortona, is the little Umbrian hill-town of Città della Pieve. It is so
deeply buried in its oak woods that one can barely see it from the hills
and plains around it. The town is very old and very sleepy, built of red
bricks with hardly any stones, and scarcely any buildings of importance.
The streets seem fallen dead asleep. "Why do you come here? The place is
dead. Nothing ever happens in our city," said the melancholy daughter of
the landlord, and the girl, by her unconscious words, explained the very
reason of our visit.
Nothing ever happens in Città della Pieve. The town has fallen on sleep
in its delightful landscape--on sleep as silent and profound as that of
all the fossil shells in the banks along the roads which lead to it. But
the place is strangely and marvellously beautiful; it holds the very
essence of that intense religious charm peculiar to the landscapes of
Umbria, and to the painters who have painted them; without exaggeration,
we may say that the city looks to-day just exactly as it looked over
four hundred years ago, at the time when, to the lovers of art, its
history began and ended.[86]
* * * * *
Pietro Vannucci de Castro Plebis _detto il Perugino_, was born at Città
della Pieve in the year 1446. His parents were very poor, but they were
of a good family and position. There were many children, and life was a
struggle for bread in the small boy's home. When he was about eight, his
father, Christoforo Vannucci, decided to educate him as a painter, and
so he brought him to the city of Perugia, and there, as Vasari says,
"this child, who had been reared in penury and want, was given as a shop
drudge to a painter who was not particularly distinguished in his
calling, but who held the art in great veneration, and highly honoured
the men who excelled therein." The painter was probably Bonfigli, one of
the most delightful artists of the Umbrian school, but Pietro must have
gathered instruction from other sources too, from Fiorenzo di Lorenzo
and Piero della Francesca, who we know were painting at that time. Maybe
the boy met them at their work in churches, maybe he even travelled with
them as a sort of journeyman. But it was probably Bonfigli who early
inspired him with an ambitious desire to spread his wings in higher
spheres of art than the little Umbrian town afforded him, and who gave
him the worldly-wise advice retailed to us at some length by Vasari:
Perugino must go to Florence,
"for the air of that city generates a desire for glory and honour,
and gives a natural quickness to the perceptions of men. Yet it is
true that when a man has acquired sufficient for his purposes in
Florence, if he wishes to effect more than merely to live from day
to day, as do the beasts that perish, and desires to become rich,
he must depart from its boundaries and seek another market for the
excellence of his works and for the reputation conferred on artists
by that city. For the city of Florence treats her painters as Time
treats her works, which, having perfected, he destroys, and by
little and little gradually consumes."
Pietro listened to these naïve counsels; he drank them in and he
followed them out to the letter. When quite a young man he started
across the hills to Florence. He probably travelled as a journeyman,
begging or earning his bread along the way. He reached Florence, entered
the studio of Andrea Verrocchio, buried himself in a passionate study of
his art, and, barely ten years after the date when, as an almost unknown
artist, he had entered Florence with the secret of his genius in his
soul, he left it again to go to Rome and paint a portion of the Sistine
Chapel at the command of the reigning pope. Pietro studied in good
schools and in excellently good society. In Florence he probably met
with men like Botticelli, Credi, and certainly Leonardo da Vinci.
Raphael's father, Giovanni Santi, is said to have written the following
lines about the two young painters:
"Due giovan par d'etate e par d'amore
Lionardo da Vinci, e 'l Perusino
Pier della Pieve, ch'è un divin pittore."
Divine in truth were the two young men, for they were to be the fathers
of the Lombard and the Umbrian schools of painting.
Perugino's earliest commissions for pictures were received in Florence,
but nearly all the work of that period is lost. We cannot exaggerate the
loss, but it is useless now to dwell on it and to describe the vanished
frescoes of the Gesuati convent. Pietro was
[Illustration: PERUGINO: MADONNA AND PATRON SAINTS OF PERUGIA PAINTED
FOR THE MAGISTRATES' CHAPEL AT PERUGIA, NOW IN THE VATICAN AT ROME]
called to Rome about the year 1483. There he painted several pictures on
the walls of the Sistine chapel. Only two of them remain, and the
figures of Michelangelo's Last Judgment have long obliterated the
sweet-faced Umbrian saints and landscapes which used to cover the east
wall.[87] Having spent a little time in Rome, Perugino returned to his
native land, and the best of his paintings belong to that period--namely
to the years 1490-1502.
This is no place in which to describe the works of Perugino's prime. The
world knows them and the capitals of Europe possess them, but from the
city of Perugia, for which some of the very best were painted, they have
been taken away by "_quel stupendo ladro_--Napoleone Bonaparte."[88]
Perugino's fame spread like wildfire over the cities of Italy. "This
_maestro Pietro_," says a very old chronicler, "was distinguished
(_singolare_) in his art throughout the universal world." So intense was
his fame and popularity, and his work in such demand, that it was
impossible for him, for one single man, to supply all the work which men
demanded of him. We should not therefore feel surprised at the number of
second-rate pictures, planned by the master and carried out by his
scholars, which have come down to us bearing his name.
From the period of his prime, Perugino perhaps went wrong--that is to
say, he realised his own charms, specified, docketted them, stereotyped
the smile of his saints and set his scholars working, so to speak, on
the reproduction of the labels he himself had painted. His personality
extended itself into a school, where, at times, it became mere
caricature. Other stars had risen on the horizon, great and shining;
some of them straight from the master's own workshop, some from other
cities. There is a pitiful story told of the jealousy of the old Umbrian
master for the growing fame of Michelangelo. It ended in a lawsuit from
which Pietro withdrew his claims; but the tale may be unfounded, and we
know that Vannucci praised the David when called to pass a judgment on
it, we also know that he named one of his own children after the Tuscan
sculptor.
But if we can recognise the later weakness of Perugino, the men who
lived in his days and who openly declared him to be the master of
masters never apparently recognised it. They seem to have worshipped his
decadence as they had worshipped his dawn. They paid large sums for the
feeble saints which rose like ghosts beneath his brush. They desired no
better man to save them in the time of plague and bloodshed by the
creation of a S. Sebastian which they might carry in procession, or a
Madonna that they might kneel to. And truly to the end an ineffable
sweetness, a religious amiability, is the undercurrent of the master's
painting.
Pietro Vannucci died of the plague in the year 1523 at Fontignano, a
small village near Perugia, where he had been called to paint a S.
Sebastian in the time of pestilence. He was hurried into some desolate
grave under an oak by the wayside, and he died, as they say, without
faith of immortality, denying to the last that Saviour, whose face and
figure, whose Mother and surroundings, he, of all men on earth, had
striven through life to idealize.
So writes Vasari, but on this accusation we would pause. There may have
been some sickness in Pietro's soul, we feel and see it in his work and
portrait; but he had lived in terrible times and seen much evil and
striven to paint much good. The fact that he was buried in unconsecrated
ground proves literally nothing, for an old chronicler, describing the
wretchedness of the times, combined with the terrors of the plague,
tells us, "that such was the state of affairs, that the dead were paid
as little attention to in those times as in our day we might give to
goats or sheep; and that especially in the country where no one attended
to anything, all died, almost without exception, not like men but almost
like beasts; and as the consecrated ground did not suffice for burial
they put the bodies into ditches, covering them up with a very little
earth." Furthermore, "it was prohibited to visit the sick, and to attend
the funerals of the dead." This being the case, how was it possible to
find the corpse of one old man in order to lay it in consecrated ground?
Pietro's sons tried hard to find it. We read of them: of Giambatisto,
Francesco and Michaelangelo, searching diligently but in vain for their
father's bones, that they might lay them in the Church of S.
Agostino.[89]
Mariotti the chronicler of Perugino, whose loving and infinitely careful
search has soothed, if it could not obliterate Vasari's spiteful words,
ends his notes on Perugino with the following quotation from a Latin
poet:--
"Se pictus moreris, non moriturus obis."
* * * * *
It was just at the end of the period of Pietro's prime, namely, about
the years 1499 to 1507, that he was commissioned to paint the walls of
the Cambio. It is interesting to remember that at this time Perugino was
in correspondence with the monks of Orvieto, who wished him to paint the
frescoes in their Duomo. He had long dallied with his answer, he had
certain other large works on hand, but when his fellow-citizens sent in
their request that he should undertake this very considerable work for
them he did not hesitate; he threw over his previous engagement, which,
as we know, was magnificently taken up by Signorelli, and he at once set
to work upon the walls of the Cambio.
Perugino was perhaps out of his element in this new undertaking. He had
no choice of subjects, for they had been selected for him by the members
of the Guild, who throughout show a most naïve interest and concern in
the decoration of their rooms. These men were determined to secure the
very best work they could; their seats, their panels, their doors were
of the finest wood, worked by the most skilful carpenters and artists of
the day. They were not wise in literature themselves, so they applied to
the best scholar of their city, Francesco Matarazzo, for instructions,
and it was he who most probably arranged the curious mixture of classic
subjects and inscriptions which Perugino, with a certain child-like and
ingenuous persistence, painted as he had painted all the familiar
subjects of the Bible. For the ceiling of the audience chamber, which
deals entirely with mythological figures, he may have consulted certain
old illustrated missals in the Perugian archives; one of these, a Cicero
(unhappily stolen from the library some years ago), very probably
suggested some of the figures and beasts of the Zodiac which decorate
the ceiling.
* * * * *
The impression made upon one by the painting in the Cambio is very calm
and pleasing. The whole is a harmony--a harmony of subjects sacred and
profane such as the classic-loving minds of scholars in the days of the
Renaissance delighted to create, and give to one of their purely
religious artists to carry out successfully. The left wall is covered
by two frescoes--two lines of figures--eight Romans and four Greeks.
Behind these figures stretches the fair, calm, Umbrian landscape, dear
to the heart of the Umbrian painter. In the sky above them are four
female figures, Prudence and Justice, Fortitude and Temperance, and
below them small angels hold the long inscription which is written over
every group. Very soft and tender is Perugino's conception of Roman
Emperors and Greek philosophers. They have the hands of women, their
faces are sweet like the faces of saints. They look a little sad, and
very gentle as they bend towards each other--not one of these men could
have proved a ruler of nations. What did Perugino mean when he painted
in the second group this visionary host of warriors? Surely he dreamed
of some fair Umbrian girls that he had met in May along the lanes, but
not of heroes. These youths, with their wonderful headgear and their
long, limp bodies would have fallen as field flowers fall before the
scythe or even a summer shower. That they are fair no one denies, and in
the face of Cincinnatus there is a mysterious sweetness which disarms
our criticism; but they are merely spiritual or imaginative portraits of
the men whose names are carefully inscribed beneath them. The opposite
wall is covered by a group of Prophets and of Sibyls--a combination
which was not uncommon in later Christian art. To the left Isaiah,
Moses, Daniel, David and Jeremiah, and opposite them the Persian,
Cumaean, Lybian, Tyburtine and Delphic sibyls. Perugino crowned this
most singular mixture of pagan and of Hebrew figures with a portrait of
God the Father in glory. Many of the faces in this group are very
beautiful, notably that of Daniel, which is said to be a portrait of
young Raphael, and is a truly exquisite thing. Jeremiah is represented
as a young and very melancholy man, and his face is said to be a
portrait of Pinturicchio, but if this fact is true the likeness is much
idealized.
In the two frescoes at the end of the room, namely, the Nativity and the
Transfiguration, Pietro was in his old and dearer element. The former of
these is a beautiful bit of his best religious work, but it has been
terribly damaged by smoke, as the lamp of the Cambio used to hang
beneath it.
There is some dispute as to whether Pietro worked alone at these
frescoes. It appears almost certain that he did do so, with the
exception, perhaps, of one of his scholars, l'Ingegno, who is said to
have painted the face of Christ in the Transfiguration.[90] The ceiling,
where the planets are painted in medallions, is perhaps the work of his
school, although the drawings were entirely supplied by Perugino.
Pinturicchio is said to have helped in the painting, and Raphael
doubtless watched it with delight, and from it drew suggestions which he
carried later to the Vatican. Delightful animals, dragons, and different
birds pull the chariots of the various planets. The arabesques are
infinitely varied, and form a study in themselves. Small boys and
cherubs ride astride of dragons or of goats, and strange fantastic
animals turn and twist themselves through flower stalks and bowls of
fruits and flowers. Squirrels, peacocks, snakes, and many other known
and unknown creatures, cover the arches like enamelled gems.
* * * * *
It is curious to pass from Perugino's frescoes in the audience chamber
of the Cambio to those of his pupil Giannicola Manni in the chapel of
the same guild. Manni's work is very rare, and indeed it is barely seen
outside Perugia.[91] He was a scholar of Perugino, and in his earlier
years he followed in the steps of his master, but in later life he went
to Florence and there acquired a love for the style of Andrea del Sarto.
The influence of the two distinct schools of painting is strongly marked
in the chapel of the Cambio, the ceiling of which was painted early in
Manni's life, the walls after his return from Florence. Manni is a
genial and attractive painter. He paints exactly as he pleases,
regardless of religion or of history, and in his series of scenes from
the life of S. John he gives us a set of luxurious human beings leading
a very human cinque-cento life. The colour is bright, the figures
portraits of the time. The ladies are very decolletées, fat, and dressed
in comfortable gowns of the most beautiful stuffs and the simplest cut.
One lady in the Nativity is particularly attractive. She wears a
gorgeous gown of red; her fluffy yellow hair is neatly gathered in a
net, embossed with bobs of the purest gold. S. Elizabeth, too, may be
envied the splendour of her bed, and the looping of its heavy damask
curtains. There is a sense of luxury, a sort of wanton abundance which
is almost Venetian, throughout Manni's frescoes of the life of S. John.
In the banquet scene, a dog and cat are preparing for a playful battle
in the foreground of the picture. Had the Umbrian painter seen some
canvasses of Veronese? Certainly he had wandered far afield from the
early teaching which shows so clear upon the ceiling. He died in 1544,
and most of his work, which we know to have consisted chiefly of
banners, is lost to us, lost too, the painting of the city clock which
Mariotti records for us with such minute precision.[92]
* * * * *
On leaving the Cambio it would be well to look in at the Magistrate's
audience chamber which opens on to the Corso two doors further on. It is
a magnificent piece of Renaissance woodwork where every inch is
exquisitely carved and finished. Perugia is rich in rare and lovely
carvings, but nowhere more than in this single hall.