_The Pinacoteca_[93]
" ...Parmi de pareilles moeurs, les âmes se maintiennent
vivantes, et le sol est tout labouré pour faire germer les arts.
Mais quel contraste entre ces arts et ces moeurs!"
H. TAINE, "Pérouse et Assise," _Voyage en Italie_.
There is perhaps no gallery in Europe as single-minded--as devoted to
one set of men--as the gallery at Perugia. In passing through its
separate rooms one feels none of that painful sense of clash and strain
produced by a mixture of different schools, which haunts one in so many
collections of statues or of pictures; and the most tired and
indifferent traveller will feel something soothed and softened in his
brain before he turns his back upon the quiet sacred pictures of the
Umbrian masters.
In no land perhaps, and in no school of art, was the feeling of the
painters more purely and more absolutely _religious_ than in the land of
Umbria. The saints were painted for places where saints were worshipped;
the Christs have the love of the Father in their faces; the Marys are
Mothers of pity and of grace; the bishops have renounced the ways of
earth--their faces are calm and grey beneath their mitres. And the
Umbrian angels are crowned with roses, but they are the roses of
Paradise, and not the flowers of earth and of her banquets. Think of the
galleries of Venice, of Bonifazio's Dives, and the glorious women of
Titian; think of the Roman collections, of Bologna and Guercino; nay,
even think of the later art of Florence, and then come back to these
calm Umbrian masters. The gap is wide; the one is full of the passion
and splendour of earth, the other of the sentiment of heaven.
In M. Rio's chapters on the Umbrian school (_l'Art Chrétien_, vol. ii.),
he dwells at length on the purely spiritual tendency of the Umbrian
school, and to enforce this he points out two of its most remarkable
characteristics; firstly he remarks that the Umbrian painters rarely
painted portraits, and secondly, he gives an account of one of their
chief products, namely, the painting of the _gonfalone_ or banner.
We have seen in the history how the inhabitants of Perugia, driven to
desperation by their own wickedness, would take fits of the most
passionate religious revolt, and, casting aside the vanities of the
flesh, half kill themselves with cords and stripes and lamentations.
This excess of repentance took different forms. Sometimes, as we know,
it resulted in an appeal to the saints through wild, mad litanies; at
others in an appeal to Christ's mercy through art; and it was at such
times that the Umbrian school, beginning with Bonfigli and ending in
works like Raphael's Sistine Madonna and Baroccio's much later designs,
painted the _gonfalone_, a style of picture which is very typical of
Umbria, and which should be looked at with a knowledge of the events
from which it first originated. These banners were carried about the
city, the priests walking in front, the populace behind, a wail and
shriek of lamentation falling on the air as the procession passed.
Sometimes, as in the banner of Bonfigli at S. Fiorenzo, a poem of
supplication to God would be painted, upheld by angels, on the banner
itself, with passionate words of prayer upon it. It is difficult to
render into English the palpitating style of the original verses, but we
quote some passages to illustrate the sentiment which inspired the
painting of the _gonfalone_ of S. Fiorenzo (the date of the banner is
about 1476):
"Oh, most obstinate and wicked people--cruel, proud, and full of
all iniquity, who hast placed thy faith and thy desires on things
which are full of a mortal misery, I, the angel of Heaven, am sent
unto you from God to tell you that he will put an end to all your
wounds and weeping, your ruin and your curse, through the mediation
of Mary.... Turn, turn your eyes, most miserable mortals, to the
great examples of the past and present, to the utter miseries and
heavy evils which Heaven sends to you because of all your sins:
your homicide and your adultery, your avarice and luxury.... O,
miserable beings, the justice of heaven works not in a hurry, but
it punishes always, even as men deserve.... Nineveh was a city
florid and magnificent, and Babylon was likewise, but now they are
as nothing; and Sodom and Gomorrah, behold them now--a morass of
sulphur and of fetid waters.... Oh, therefore be grateful, and
acknowledge the benefits and graces of Our Saviour, and let your
souls burn hotly with the fire of faith and charity, of hope and
faithful love.... But, and if you should again grow slothful and
unwilling to renounce your errors, I foretell a second judgment
upon you, and I reckon that it will prove more terrible, more cruel
than the first...."
The _gonfalone_ on which this menacing appeal of the angel of God is
painted is by Bonfigli, and was made at the time of a terrible
pestilence which raged through Perugia at the end of the fifteenth
century.
In Umbria therefore, more than in most countries, the history of her art
should be studied side by side with the history of the times in which it
was produced, for the one was, as it were, the spiritual escape or
reaction from the other. The art of Umbria was perhaps only another form
of that spirit which produced the teaching of S. Francis. The first
pictures of Perugia are full of man's best prayers, the earliest of them
bear his stripes, in very few can we detect his wantonness or humour;
and when we say that the later ones are imbued with man's weakness, or
at least his sentimentality, we make a most apparent platitude. It is
sufficient in this place to note that whatever the final faults of the
school, it originated in a purpose that was pure--the purpose of men who
strove to represent the very opposite of all that fury, blood, and
passion peculiar to the time and place in which they lived and painted.
To most people, therefore, who once have grasped these facts, there will
be something sad, nay, even offensive, in the Pinacoteca at Perugia.
Why, and for whom, were these purely religious paintings torn from their
niches in the quiet churches, and hung up, side by side, in a glare of
light on the walls of a gallery? How pale, and how sad they look, after
all, the saints and the Marys, the angels and the holy Child, here on
the bare grey walls. The thing has been said a hundred times before, but
a friend at Perugia said it to us in a way we have never forgotten. He
was a priest, and he loved his church. We were discussing together the
present system of local picture galleries. His eyes grew dark. "Yes," he
said, "it is as though they would tear a child from the breasts of its
mother. The mother withers and dies, and the child dies too, without her
care in the wilderness where they laid it."
* * * * *
It is the student of art who profits by the present arrangement, for the
pictures at Perugia are not difficult to find. With the exception of the
Duomo and S. Pietro, most of the churches have been ransacked, and their
canvasses and panels neatly stored in perfect order of dates and names
on the walls of the Pinacoteca, and it is an easy matter, even in a
quiet morning's stroll, to follow here the rise and fall of Umbrian art.
In the limited space before us it will not be possible to give anything
but a skeleton sketch of the school of Perugino. Larger works contain
abundant store of facts about this particular centre of Italian art; but
if one only shuts one's eyes and dreams of it, the three great names
start up before one: Pietro Vannucci, Raphael, and Pinturicchio. Close
upon these follow other names; some, and these perhaps the fairest and
most charming, rise like the dawn behind them: Ottaviano Nelli,
Bonfigli, and Fiorenzo di Lorenzo. The pupils follow after Manni, Lo
Spagna, Eusebio di S. Giorgio, l'Ingegno, Sinibaldo Ibi, Tiberio
d'Assisi and a host of others, who die at last, feeble, but not utterly
degraded, in the works of the two Alfanis.
* * * * *
An easy-going historian of Perugia summed up the earliest stages of her
art in the following sentence: "I have not been able to discover that
Perugia had any painters before the time of Bonfigli, but even if she
had them, they will not have been worthy of mention." The assertion was
sweeping, and later writers have taken pains to contradict it, but for
those who have only time for a superficial and general study of Perugian
pictures it yet holds a good deal of truth. No great original work (with
the exception of the missal workers, in which style of art Perugia is
very rich) is left to us from the hand of a Perugian artist before the
time of Bonfigli, and the early history of her art may be said to have
been a great deal that of outside influences, for from very early times
the best and greatest masters appear, like foreign tribes before them,
to have climbed the hill and left some subtle marks upon her churches
and her palaces.[94]
As the School of Siena died, that of Umbria awoke to life. Close upon
the heels of Taddeo Bartoli, those men followed who were born to precede
the School of Perugino. Before them there were around Perugia only
phantoms: stiff saints on panels and on parchment, without dates, ghosts
of unattained, though dimly felt, ideals--a scattered flock of
"primitives," left here and there on chapel walls or psalters. Then
gradually, all through Umbria and her border lands, in a steady circle
of glory, like the stars on a summer night, the lights arose and burned.
At Gubbio, Camerino, Foligno, Gualdo, Fabriano, and Urbino we trace
their steady progress through the work of men like Nelli, Piero della
Francesca, Gentile da Fabriano, Niccolò Alunno, and many others. And as
these stars arose great comets travelled through them--Giotto, Fra
Angelico, Benozzo Gozzoli, Filippo Lippi, and others, till the whole sky
was full. Then from the centre, straight from the hill of Città della
Pieve--there rose Pietro Perugino, and to his school came one with the
halo of pure art upon his forehead,--Raphael Sanzio of Urbino.
* * * * *
The following notes on the Pinacoteca and its pictures may be of use to
anyone who requires a few more details than a guide-book can supply.
They pretend to be nothing like a serious criticism, for the history of
art is long and the books about it full; in most of them the art of
Umbria is freely treated. We have gleaned our notes about the painters
of Perugia from such sources as Vasari (who, however, is often
prejudiced), Crowe and Cavalcaselle, and several local works. Any
personal gossip has been drawn from the ever delightful works of
Mariotti, whose words, if they be now and then a little antiquated, are
as trustworthy as those of a faithful student's only can be. We have
dealt chiefly with the work of the Umbrian painters, and indeed, with
the exception of Fra Angelico's panels and those of some of the Sienese
masters, there is little else to study in this small and charming
gallery.
* * * * *
The Umbrian School followed close upon that of Siena, and the Gallery of
Perugia has some fine bits of Sienese work, notably some panels by
Taddeo Bartoli (1363-1422) in Sala IV. This room has some other good
panels of early masters--of masters who probably influenced the
Perugians, but whose names are lost to us.[95]
ROOM I.
_Sala dei Cimelii._
The first room in the gallery is devoted to the very earliest art of
Siena and Umbria, and is one of those rather painful collections of
pictures which we find in every local Italian gallery--a room of the
primitive painters--which are, as the narrow path of art, beset with
many thorns, where only those who passionately love the goal need try to
push the briars back and tread the damp and pebbles. But we never
forget, though we may even dislike, the pitiful pale figures of the
crucified Christ, and the staring wooden saints in triptychs, for in
them is shown the strain of technical ignorance, but of ignorance which
strives with passionate pain to get beyond itself and soar towards the
expression of some deep emotion. This strain and impotent desire is
amply shown in the monstrous figure of our Saviour by Magaritone
d'Arezzo (see No. 26), which used to hang inside the chapel of S.
Bernardino. Such as it is that figure had the seed of art in it, and of
an art which, perhaps, had a greater power of appeal to the souls of men
and women in pain than all the finished figures of the later painters.
No. 28 is an interesting picture, inasmuch as the Bishop whom it
represents holds tight to his breast a picture of the old town of
Perugia. No. 16 is one of the earliest paintings known in Perugia. It is
terribly damaged, and it is difficult to trace the story of the Saint in
the battered little panels. These same panels were the first coffin of
Beato Egidio (see p. 198). Sometime after his death a splendid tomb was
made for the Saint, which can still be seen in the church of the
University, and when the humbler coffin was pulled to pieces, some
unknown local painter took the strange fancy to paint on it the history
of the man whose bones it had first covered, together with an accurate
portrait of his new and lovelier tomb. There are many other pictures in
this room, among them (No. 11) an exquisite fragment of some old
predella with two small angels on it; and one or two remains of early
Sienese work.
_Bonfigli._
The room which follows that devoted to the early schools, namely, the
Cappella del Bonfigli, is to a student of history one of the most
interesting points in the whole gallery, for here, through the frescoes
of a most childlike and delightful painter, we live again the life of
old Perugia; and here too we stand, face to face, with the authentic
work of a man whose celebrity formerly centred round the fact that he
was the first master of Perugino, but who, as the years go by, will,
doubtless, ever more and more stand on his own feet, and shine because
of some strange, subtle and ever-living charm, that of the individual,
which clings to all his work.
The Pinacoteca has many of Bonfigli's works, and no one who once has
realised the fashion in which this early Umbrian master crowned his
women and his angels will ever be able to forget it. How thin and
exquisite the veils upon the pale, calm heads of his Madonnas; how fair
and neat the wreaths of roses on the yellow hair of his young angels!
Bonfigli was, indeed, a pleasant painter, and it is strange to think
that his home relations were of a tempestuous order: "Certainly he had a
wife," says Mariotti, "and he had her of such a sort that she caused him
nothing but anxiety; moreover, he was in constant strife with her." But
Bonfigli was not always calm in his painting. He could be humorous, he
could have a touch of Carpaccio in him, as will be seen in his frescoes
for the Magistrates' Chapel; but he could also be passionate and
dramatic. To understand him fully one must study him in his _gonfaloni_,
or banners. Perugia has five of these--one of S. Bernardino, now in the
Pinacoteca, another in the sacristy of S. Francesco al Prato; another in
S. Fiorenzo (see p. 232); the fourth in S. Maria Nuova; and the fifth in
S. Lorenzo.[96] All have suffered from exposure and from restoration,
but they are unique and individual forms of art. The Christ in them is
inexorable and revengeful, Death strives with man, saints and the
Madonna try to interfere, and sad and supplicating groups of citizens
kneel by their city walls and pray for grace.
Nothing is definitely known about the early life of Bonfigli. There
seems to be no record of his birth. He was probably born about 1420, and
died about 1496. The first authentic mention of his work is in 1454,
when he undertook a commission from the priors and their chaplain to
paint the walls of the Magistrates' Chapel in the Palazzo Pubblico. That
Bonfigli was well known and very highly appreciated in his native city
before that date is evident. Mariotti tells us that he was called in by
the citizens as one of the judges to pronounce judgment on Agostino
Duccio's façade at S. Bernardino. It is probable that he even had a
school of painting--that school to which Vasari somewhat slightingly
alludes in his life of Perugino.
SALA II.
_Cappella di Bonfigli_
(_formerly the chapel of the Magistrates' Guild_).
Mariotti gives a long and humorous account of the contract between
Bonfigli and the magistrates about the painting of their chapel.
Undertaken in 1454 the work was still unfinished at the time of the
painter's death in 1496, and Mariotti is unable to discover any
sufficient reason for such undignified delay. "I do not easily think
ill of anyone," he writes, "and least of all of painters, but certainly
in those years we have no record even of any influenza raging in the
city of Perugia." When the chapel was half painted, Fra Filippo Lippi
was called in to judge about its excellence. He found the pictures good,
and voted a sum of four hundred florins in payment to Bonfigli, who once
more, and with infinite slowness, went to work upon them. Only the
skeleton of this work remains. At the end of the last century, Mariotti
thus bewails it: "But the pictures of Bonfigli--oh, my God--how have
they been ravaged by the little care bestowed upon them, how devastated
by the course of time." Half ruined by a form of restoration which
perhaps is worse than none, ill-lighted, and without their former
colour, the frescoes yet remain a delightful and engaging study. They
represent the lives of the two bishops, St Louis of Toulouse, and S.
Ercolano, patron saints of Perugia. To the right as you enter, and in a
dark corner by the window is the Consecration of S. Louis; next to it
the miracle of the fish performed by that Saint. This picture is
admirably preserved. The landscape is one of those half real and half
fantastic follies of a wise man which always charm one. Bonfigli knew
that he must paint a town by the seashore; he painted the sea, but he
put his own fair Umbrian city straight down upon its shores. There
stands the church of S. Domenico with its celebrated windows, and up
behind it, tier on tier, there rise the towers and the brown roofs of
the city that we read about, the Perugia of the middle ages, against a
dark blue sky. The miracle is a naïve one. A merchant lost his bag of
gold during a storm at sea. He prayed to S. Louis to reveal to him what
had become of it. S. Louis appeared in heaven and showed that a certain
large fish had swallowed the purse. The fish was caught, cut open, and
inside it was the merchant's bag of gold. We see the fisherman toiling
up from his boat with the heavy fish upon his shoulders, and then we see
the monks cutting open the fish, and the merchant and his wife receiving
their money. So realistically is the scene presented, that we even see
the blood of the fish upon the bag.
The next picture has been terribly damaged, and it is difficult to
understand the subject; but a learned gentleman of Perugia, to whom we
are indebted for various most ingenious suggestions, fancies that it is
simply the representation of some miracle of healing performed by the
Saint in Rome; certainly Bonfigli has striven to combine in his
background a marvellous mixture of Roman and Etruscan architecture, the
arch of Constantine mingling with Porta Susanna and the Colosseum!
The following fresco is perhaps the most delightful of the series. It
represents the burial of the Bishop of Toulouse. Now S. Louis is known
to have died in his father's castle of Brignolles in Provence at the
early age of twenty-four, but all this was of very secondary importance
to the ingenuous Bonfigli. It was sufficient for him to know that a dead
Bishop had to be painted. He selected the architecture that he loved
best--his own Perugian church of S. Pietro--he sliced it in half so that
all might look inside it, and on a bier in the centre of the aisle he
laid the corpse of a quite middle-aged Bishop. With infinite care and
faithful precision he copied the lines of his church. The true basilica
is here, not touched at all by decoration. There was no choir in those
days; a dark blue sky looks in at the windows, the roof is bare with all
its rafters showing. But the central figure is out of all proportion.
The feet and the head of S. Louis of Toulouse almost touch the columns
in the aisle. His robe, with the golden fleur de lis, is neatly folded
round him, his mitre glistens in the light; his face is grey and calm,
and full of dignity and of repose. Bonfigli had a sense of humour and
could not refrain from a touch of caricature. It is impossible to look
at the group of monks and prelates round S. Louis, and not to feel at
once convinced of this. A fat and pompous Bishop, in golden cope and
mitre, is saying the mass for the dead. His large red book is supported
by the head of a kneeling friar, and the very thumbs of this friar
express his disgust and discomfort. To the left of the Bishop a group of
roaring monks take up his words and repeat them in dolorous voices. Only
to look at their faces one knows that their litany is absolutely out of
tune. At the head of the Saint another priest is reading in a book, his
acolytes swing incense, one holds the Bishop's staff. The rest of the
church is filled with quiet groups of men and women; and the most
charming figure of the whole is that of a young man in a red gown with a
shock of yellow curls, who kneels, lost in prayer, at the knees of the
dead Saint, his back turned to us.
The next picture represents the siege of Perugia by Totila. No doubt
this siege--that most memorable event in the annals of Perugia--was
rather a chaos to the mind of Bonfigli as it is to many people nowadays;
but the following history, taken from old chronicles, will explain the
whole fantastic pageant. It will be remembered that Totila besieged
Perugia in 549, and that the little town held out valiantly, but finally
fell into the power of the Goths. During a terrible siege the Bishop of
Perugia, S. Ercolano, attempted certain childlike and vain subterfuges
of war, which unhappily ended in failure and in his own martyrdom.
Ciatti, in his somewhat weariful and dreamy style, records the events of
the siege as follows:--
[Illustration: FIRST TRANSLATION OF THE BODY OF S. ERCOLANO
(FRESCO IN THE PINACOTECA OF PERUGIA)]
"It is said that the saintly Bishop S. Ercolano, receiving much
heavenly aid and holy counsels, and perhaps led by God, turned his
soul to an act of human prudence. It happened that the city was
reduced to extreme misery by reason of the scarcity of victuals, so
that the citizens decided to surrender or to die fighting. S.
Ercolano counselled them to bring him any grain which should still
be found in the granaries, and they, knowing his great sanctity,
obeyed and brought to him, after most diligent search, one small
measure of corn. Then the Saint took the sole surviving lamb"
(Bonfigli in his frescoes has painted an ox) "and, to the wonder
and silent indignation of the people, he gave it to eat of the
grain; it ate abundantly and the Bishop then threw the lamb with
great force down from the ramparts, when, by reason of its great
fulness and the height of its fall, the innocent beast was at once
killed. When the captains of the enemy beheld this thing they were
angry, saying: 'These Perugians have so much grain that they can
give it to their beasts to eat, and so much meat that they cast it
carelessly away, how can we, therefore, hope to subdue them by
famine?' But it chanced that a young acolyte spoke from off the
ramparts to some Goths and unwittingly revealed to them the
distress and the mortality reigning in the city by reason of the
want of food; and the stratagem of S. Ercolano becoming known in
the camp, the infuriated Goths, hot with anger, returned to the
attack and with impetuous fury assailed the deserted walls. Greeks
and Perugians rushed to arms, but what could they, poor
starvelings, do against the Gothic host?"
Thus fell Perugia. Our learned author goes on to describe how S.
Ercolano was conducted to the ramparts and after his skin had been torn
off in strips from the neck downwards, he was beheaded and his body
thrown into the ditch. Some faithful adherents gave it secret burial,
and finding the body of the foolish young acolyte near by, laid it in
the same grave. Later, Uliphus, governor of the city, allowed the
Perugians to give their beloved pastor proper burial. To the
astonishment of all beholders the Saint's head was found joined to his
body, which seemed like that of a man asleep. This miracle converted
many of the Arian Goths to the Roman faith, and "with rejoicings and
hymns of praise the body of S. Ercolano was borne through the streets to
the church of S. Lorenzo."
The next picture gives the burial of S. Ercolano. It is only a fragment,
and we can hardly piece the scattered groups together. There is a lovely
little group of ladies to the left--a set of typical Bonfigli women with
exquisite white headgear. The curving front of the Palazzo Pubblico upon
the Corso is painted with accurate care, the loggia of Fortebraccio too,
is clearly seen and understood. But the picture is only a shadow; the
part we most wish to see, namely, the north front of the Palazzo, is
wholly obliterated, and the restoration spoils it terribly.
In the next fresco the body of S. Ercolano is being carried from S.
Pietro to S. Lorenzo, and Bonfigli has seized this excellent opportunity
to paint a fresh portrait of his native city. In the foreground the
basilica of S. Pietro with a colonnaded front and unfinished campanile
is faithfully depicted, and behind the funeral procession (which by the
way is moving in quite the wrong direction) the town towers up into the
sky like a pack of yellow cards, broken only by its towers and
campaniles.[97]
ROOMS VI. AND VII.
_Sala di Bonfigli and Sala di Bernardino di Mariotto._
Before leaving the subject of Bonfigli it will be well to look at some
other pieces of his work which are painted in quite a different manner.
Amongst these is a Madonna and Child (No. 13). It is a beautiful
specimen of the master's purely pietistic painting.[98] Tradition says
that Fra Filippo Lippi ordered this picture. It has suffered terribly,
for in old days it was hung in the lavatory of S. Domenico, and as the
friars washed their hands they must have splashed the water up against
the panels. No. 10, the Adoration of the Magi, is also by Bonfigli. The
picture as a whole is perhaps more interesting than beautiful, inasmuch
as it is one of the very few religious pictures of the Umbrian School
where the portraits of living people have been introduced. Orsini tells
us that the Madonna is a portrait of Bonfigli's sister, the Child a
picture of his nephew, and the youngest of the three kings that of his
brother. The loveliest point in the picture is the group of angels up in
the roof. Bonfigli must, we think, have seen the swallows flitting at
springtime in and out of some low breezy barn, and put their movements
into angels' forms. The predella, too, is a perfect gem in itself,
notably the panel of the Baptism where the wilderness is painted dark
and brown, but the sunrise is full upon the figures of three angels who
stand with crowns of roses on their heads and watch the scene among the
rocks. There is an Annunciation in the same room by Bonfigli; and it
again is chiefly charming because of the treatment of the angels. They
come fluttering up behind a group of cypress trees, all in the flush of
dawn. But the foreground figure is strange indeed. What did Bonfigli
mean when he painted S. Luke and his ox, and planted them there in the
midst of the picture so as quite to distract one's attention from the
principal figures of the piece? In the next room (Sala VII.) Bonfigli's
angels can be studied with ease. There are in all eight panels of them,
and it is interesting to see how the early painter strove between
realism and idealism in the faces. He loved his smiling angels best;
what care he took to crown them with pink roses; what baskets too of
roses he gave to them to carry! yet to his angels of the Passion he gave
no roses, only the symbols of the Crucifixion, its anguish and its
thorns.
We have lingered long over the work of a man whose figure is such an
attractive one in the Umbrian school. Before passing on to the work of
his contemporaries we must mention the name of another artist four of
whose pictures are hung in the room of the Bonfigli angels: namely,
Bernardino di Mariotto. Bernardino is an interesting figure in the
gallery, and one is struck at first sight by the quality of his work,
which differs from everything round it. He seems like some strange
missing link in the history of the Umbrian and the Roman school; and so
little is known about him that up to a quite recent date his work was
confused with that, first of much earlier painters, and then of
Pinturicchio. His treatment of detail: the Virgin's gown, the garlands
of fruit and flowers, the angels' wings and the saints' dresses, is
beautiful though his colour is cold and hard. His peculiar use of a very
stiff baldachin made people say that he was a master of Raphael. As a
matter of fact he lived at S. Severino in the Marches and worked about
the years 1502 to 1521.
* * * * *
In the same room there are two big pictures by Bartolomeo Caporali, who
was a pupil of Perugino. His great flying angels in No. 12 are like the
angels of Bonfigli gone mad, there is something grand in the rush of
their wings, and whatever the faults of the somewhat exaggerated
composition, it forces one's immediate attention.
[Illustration: GONFALONE OF THE ANNUNCIATION BY NICCOLÒ ALUNNO]
To return to the order of the earlier painters, we come to one or two
names which are probably more familiar to most people than that of
Bonfigli: these are Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, Boccati da Camerino and Niccolò
Alunno. There is a fine bit of Alunno's work in Sala VII. (No 14). It is
about the only thing of his which is now attributed to him in Perugia.
Such a host of angels singing and playing to God in the heavens, and a
charming garden scene round the young Virgin! She kneels very quietly at
her desk. Neat pots of flowers stand on the marble wall behind her and
three stiff cypress trees against the sky; round a corner of the garden
wall two very engaging angels stand gossiping together, their heads
thrown back, their mouths a little pouting. In the immediate foreground
two patron saints are kneeling to introduce a group of lawyers who
commissioned the painting of the banner.
* * * * *
Boccati da Camerino's work is rare. There is a charming thing of his in
Sala VI. (No. 13): a Madonna and a fascinating choir of angels. His
largest picture (No. 16) is in the same room and represents the same
subject. The Madonna sits enthroned under a heavy pergola of roses, and
all around her is a stiff little choir of angels: a most delightful and
original conception. The picture was painted for the monks of S.
Domenico, and so the emblem of the saint, his dog, had to figure in it.
What Boccati was about we cannot judge, but he certainly painted an
ermine instead of a dog, and the little Christ receives the strange
beast with delight. The predella of the picture is full of stories
almost in the style of Carpaccio. Boccati had a rare and charming fancy.
In his scene of the procession to Calvary, he shows how a rude soldier
attempts to strike the fainting figure of Christ; and one of the horses
of the guard, with ears bent back, stoops forward to bite the hand of
him who would distress the Saviour.
ROOMS VIII. AND IX.
_Sala di Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, Gabinetto di Fiorenzo di Lorenzo._
We now come to Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, to whose name two rooms in the
Pinacoteca have been dedicated. Very little is known about his life. We
can only gather that he studied in the school of Bonfigli, and that he
competed with Bonfigli in the painting of banners. He may have been a
rather younger man, but he was earlier than Perugino and his scholars,
and so he forms a sort of link between the masters and the pupils of a
great school.
Fiorenzo may be said to have begun the school which now is called the
school of Perugino. It was he who distinctly and for ever broke away
from that Greek or Byzantine influence which we feel in much of
Bonfigli's work. In his own day he was eclipsed by the greater lights
which rose up round him, and it is only to us, who try to trace the
school, that he is such a really important and delightful figure.
Throughout his work one feels a great effort towards light--towards
fresh issues. His drawing and his colour are often very beautiful, but
there is a great difference in the style of the various works ascribed
to him. Compare No. 53 (Sala VIII.) and its surrounding panels, with
Nos. 30, 6, and 5. (The three latter probably all formed part of one
large altar-piece.)
The Adoration, attributed to Fiorenzo, is a crowded but a beautiful
composition. The Virgin, S. Joseph, and a group of shepherds kneel in
the foreground, and exquisite flowers, grape-hyacinths,
[Illustration: ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS BY FIORENZO DI LORENZO]
even some fluffy heads of dandelion seed grow at their feet. Behind them
is the stable--an Umbrian stable in an Umbrian landscape--filled with a
host of angels. In the dim distance the shepherds feed their flocks upon
the hills. The figures are mere sketches of some Umbrian goat-herds whom
Fiorenzo must have met outside the Umbrian farms at dawn. Nos. 10 and 16
(in Sala IX.) are beautiful specimens of the master's later work. Note
the hand and the crimson sleeves of the Virgin.
But if Fiorenzo could apply himself with the religious ardour of his
school to sacred subjects, to the Bible of his art, he could also
sometimes take a holiday and write a fantastic and entrancing _scherzo_
on his own account. It is his series of pictures on the life of San
Bernardino of Siena which at once attracts us in the gallery. Here we
find one of those wonderful visions of the past--a record of men's
manners, of their costumes and architecture, as seen through the eyes of
some intelligent yet child-like artist.[99] To describe the miracles is
not an easy matter. In seeking the subject one is carried away by the
charm of the models, just as the painter was who painted them. A company
of entrancing youths with long thin legs, their marvellous crimson
tunics trimmed with fur, their small caps barely clinging to their
shocks of golden curls, strut up and down the panels, but barely
conscious of the Saint and all his patient care of them. No 3,
represents the miracle of a girl who has fallen into a well, and whom
the Saint has saved from drowning; we see a lovely and impassive
creature sitting upon the marble floor, her yellow hair has not been
wetted, the small red fillet binds it gracefully; her relations and her
lovers pray and pose all round her, but little ruffled by the memory of
the late catastrophe. Just the same is the accident of the mason,
treated in No. 7. His comrades stand about the wounded man, exquisite
and undisturbed. "Ah," they seem to say, "thus and thus it happened,
thus, maybe, he fell"; but all the time they are thinking of their
well-set tunics and of their long and lovely legs; and who can be
surprised at this, seeing that their _toilette_ is carried to
perfection? No. 5 shows the capture and escape of a prisoner. It has a
pleasant landscape in the background, a sort of park, with a lake and
trees about it. In No. 6 the Saint appears in a cloud under a beautiful
marble palace and heals the blindness of a fellow friar. The doctors do
seem somewhat interested, but everything is too beautiful and finished
for much pity or, anyhow, for pain; and as for the hair of the young men
in this panel, it is more excellently curled than in any of the series.
The remaining miracles are by another hand. Some pupil or imitator of
Fiorenzo tried to finish them, but the treatment is coarser, the charm
of the first is gone.
ROOM V.
_Sala dell' Angelico._
Before passing on to the work of Perugino and his school, which one must
confess, with the exception of Sala XI., is but a disappointing show of
canvasses and panels, one passes through the little room of Fra
Angelico.
In Taine's slight but exquisite sketch of Perugia and its pictures we
read the following words about the work of Fra Angelico at Perugia: "He
was happier here than in his pagan Florence, and it is he who first
attracts us (in the gallery). Looking at his work there, one seems to be
reading in the 'Imitatio Christi,' for on the golden background the pure
sweet faces breathe a quiet stillness, like the immaculate roses in the
gardens of Paradise." Taine is right; everyone is at once attracted to
the work of the Florentine monk when they come to the gallery of
Perugia. We have searched for some record of the friar's visit to
Perugia, but have not been successful. It is certain that the Florentine
painter came to stay in Umbria, leaving behind him as a legacy to later
painters the influence of his pious gentle art. He became a monk in 1408
at Fiesole, but his convent got mixed up in painful religious disputes,
and the monks had to fly and wander into other lands, hoping to return
when times should be more peaceful. Fra Angelico came to Cortona, and
there did some of his very earliest work. Thence, very probably, he
travelled to Foligno, staying on his way to rest at Perugia, and leaving
there, in the church of S. Domenico, that wonderful picture, all the
parts of which now hang together in the Pinacoteca. They are jewels,
these small panels--jewels fresh as dewdrops on the first May wreaths of
girls. Angelico never lost this bloom of utter purity, and here we find
it at its very dawn. The Madonna and Child are in the centre; round them
stand four angels, their baskets full of roses. "Two angels in long
dresses," says Taine, "bring their roses to the feet of the small Christ
with the dreaming eyes. They are so young, and yet so earnest." Again,
of the Annunciation, he says: "The Virgin is candour and sweetness
itself; her character is almost German, and her two hands are clasped
with deep religious fervour. The angel with the curly hair who kneels
before her seems almost like some young and happy girl--a little raw
perhaps--and coming straight from the house of her mother.... These
indeed, are the delicate touches that painters of a later date will
never find again. A sentiment is an infinite and incommunicable thing;
no learning and no effort will ever reproduce it absolutely. In real
piety there is a certain reserve; a certain modesty is shown in the
arrangement of the draperies and in the choice of little details, such
as even the best masters, only a century later, will not understand at
all." It is difficult to choose any particular point for description in
the twelve narrow panels of saints. Angelico carefully studied to show
the individual character of each. He gave to his Magdalen a new and
lovely attitude--a sort of ascetic repose. Of her physical beauty he
only left the yellow hair; it falls to her ankles gold as the maize in
autumn, but her body is wasted beneath it. St Catherine of Siena is said
to be a really authentic portrait of the Saint. The Bishop of Toulouse
is unlike that of Bonfigli, younger and gentler in expression. The whole
set make an ineffably sweet impression on our mind, and it is difficult
to turn to the other pictures in the room. Of these the best and the
most interesting is by Piero della Francesca.
Piero was one of Perugino's first masters. He was born early in the
fifteenth century at Borgo San Sepolcro. He had a passion for
perspective, and was one of the first men who made a real study of this
branch of art. We hear that he wrote books on geometry, and grappled
with Euclid and the laws of measurement. He also studied the proportion
of light and shade, and all these points are admirably proved by his
picture at Perugia (No. 21). Vasari gives a full account of it in his
life of Piero. He describes the lower part, then adds: "Above them is a
most beautiful Annunciation with an angel, which seems, in truth, to
have descended from heaven; and what is more, a range of columns in
perspective, which is indeed most beautiful." St Elizabeth of Hungary is
a fine point in the lower composition. She wears a green gown, and in
its skirt she carries the loaves which, by grace of heaven, and to
defend her from the anger of her husband, were turned, as we know, to
roses.
ROOM X.
_Sala del Perugino._
An irresistible sense of sadness creeps over us as we pass through the
room which bears the name of Pietro Perugino. Looking at the collection
one feels much in the same frame of mind as one does in searching the
wearisome domestic letters of a genius. Only one or two of the pictures
attributed to Vannucci in the Pinacoteca of Perugia have the touch of
the spirit in them. No. 25, which is double-sided like most of the
altar-pieces of convents, where the one side faced the congregation and
the other the monks or nuns, is a beautiful bit of Perugino's work, fine
both in colour and in sentiment. No. 10, too, is a small gem from one of
Pietro's really beautiful altar-pieces.[100] Nos. 20 and 4 are fragments
of one enormous altar-piece (see p. 190), which used to hang in the
church of S. Agostino and which like many others of Pietro's finest
works was torn to pieces, and carried across the Alps to swell the
galleries of Napoleon. One hurries shuddering past pictures like Nos.
1, 5, and 26. It seems so impossible that what the Germans call a
"Schöne Seele" should have allowed such things to be.
ROOM XI.
_Sala di Bernardino di Betto detto il Pinturicchio._
In the little room which leads out of Room X. we make an interesting
study of Perugino's pictures, for it contains some of his earliest and
also some of his most decadent work. Had the municipality of Perugia
just a touch of humour or malice when they hung No. 25 side by side with
No. 16? Whatever they had in their heads they have given to us a curious
study. Here are two works by the same man, the latter probably a
pot-boiler of his school but still burdened with his name. Both
represent precisely the same subject, the same set of saints is in each
of them; but the early work is full of thought, of reverence and
feeling; the early Sebastian, calm and grave, has the arrow in his very
flesh, and the later Sebastian, simpering and affected, toys with his
arrow and turns with painful affectation to the Saviour. There is a
lovely little set of sketches on the predella under No. 6; the Nativity,
a mere hurried impression, seems full of the breeze of early spring in
Umbria.
* * * * *
We have a splendid bit of Pinturicchio's work in this room which bears
his name, and also one of the rare paintings of Lo Spagna; one or two
pictures which bear at least the name of Raphael, and the much disputed
"Adoration" which has been ascribed to more than one distinguished
person.
* * * * *
Bernardino di Betto, usually known as Pinturicchio and sometimes as il
Sordicchio because he was deaf, and small and of a mean appearance,
studied in the school of Perugia, and indeed was one of its most
distinguished painters; but having left that earliest studio he carried
his talents to other parts, and painted as we know for popes and
princes, painted above all things those two wonderful series of frescoes
in the Duomo at Siena and in the Borgia rooms at the Vatican. He has
been called sometimes the Umbrian Gozzoli; certainly he was the
historical painter of the great school which grew in the times of
Perugino. Vasari with a certain prejudice and ill nature insists that
Pinturicchio's success was one rather of opportunity than of talent; but
it is much more probable that the painter was beloved because he was
faithful to his promises and carried out his orders with care and with
precision. We know, too, that after all the sums he got, and all his
heavy labours, he died of hunger and neglect on a winter's night at
Siena, his wife having deserted him and eloped with a new lover.
Pinturicchio had a grant of land given to him in the neighbourhood of
Perugia in 1495, by Alexander VI., and he determined to return to his
native city and live there; but some years later, when in money
difficulties, he was forced to sell it to a gentleman of Perugia.
The splendid altar-piece (No. 10), which alone remains to Perugia of
this distinguished pupil of Perugino, is ill lighted and rather
difficult to judge from top to bottom, but is interesting as well as
beautiful; for the picture remains just as the painter painted it with
all its panels in their proper order, unlike the panels of so many of
Perugino's finest altar-pieces. The Pietà, the angel of the
Annunciation, both the figures of the Virgin and the detail of their
dresses, fruit and books, are exquisitely finished.
* * * * *
There is in the same room an excellent specimen of the work of another
of Perugino's scholars--Lo Spagna (No. 7). Giovanni di Pietro was one of
the most distinguished of Vannucci's school, and Kugler indeed
pronounces him to be _the_ most distinguished after Raphael. It is
probable that he studied with Fiorenzo di Lorenzo before going to
Vannucci's studio, but it is difficult to discover any details about his
private life. His whole career is shrouded in some mystery. His name
would make one think he was Spanish by birth. We know that he left
Perugia and went to live at Spoleto. Vasari declares that this was
because the painters of Perugia were jealous of him and made life in
their midst impossible; this fact is however severely denied by our
gossip Mariotti, who declares that Lo Spagna was excessively well off in
Spoleto, where he not only received the rights of citizenship but also
secured a charming wife. Be all this as it may, of this really good
artist, who combined in his work the influence of Raphael and of
Perugino, only one piece is left in the place where he learned his art.
The Madonna and Saints (No. 7) is a fine specimen of his work. The
mother and the child are fresh and beautiful in colour and expression,
and all the details of the dresses and the landscape infinitely careful.
Note St Jerome, his gloves, his book, his hat and splendid gown. One
other picture is ascribed to Giovanni in the same room, but it is
greatly inferior in treatment.
* * * * *
We now come to the Adoration of the Magi, which after much dispute was
some time ago ascribed to Perugino's scholar Eusebio di San Giorgio, but
which is still the subject of endless local discussions, as, owing to
further and more minute investigations it is at length declared by
excellent judges to be the work of Raphael. One reason given for this is
that the young man to the right of the Virgin has on his trousers a
strange design, the arms of Raphael. Poor Eusebio must turn in his
grave. His former biographers, anxious to seize on any gem of painting
which should save the artist from a rather mediocre position in the
history of art, always stayed to shout exultant praises when they came
to this picture, and now the critic would tear even this glory from his
brows and crown another man whose head is already heavy with their
laurels.[101]
No. 20--a Madonna and Child--is ascribed to Raphael. The picture
certainly has something of the master in it and it may be the work of
the mere boy, when first he came from Urbino to paint with Perugino, and
in the Umbrian city dreamed his great Madonna of the future. Raphael
Sanzio passes like a dream through Perugia, leaving no certain relic of
his mighty fame save one faint faded fresco on the church wall of S.
Severo, and these poor relics in the gallery.[102]
ROOM XII.
_Sala di Giannicola e di Berto di Giovanni._
From this point forwards the interest of the gallery begins to wane. We
have tracked the dawn and seen the sunrise; now we feel the dull warmth
of midday, and passing through the weary hours of the afternoon, most
fully and amply represented in the work of the two Alfanis, we pass to
night through the fevered rooms of the Decadence. Sala XII. is devoted
to the work of Perugino's scholars, but most of it is weak. Still there
is a touch of the old sweetness here and there among the figures. Note
No. 15 by Giannicola Manni. It has a charm though it is very imitative.
The rest of Giannicola's work in this room is rather dreary. But there
is charm, too, in the purely imitative, nay copied work of Berto di
Giovanni. Berto was another of Perugino's scholars. He lived probably
towards the end of the fifteenth century and it is evident that he felt
a passionate admiration for his fellow student, Raphael. All we can
gather of facts about Berto comes to us through his connection with
Raphael. In 1516 he contracted to paint, in combination with his hero, a
picture for the nuns of Monteluce. Bits of the predella are now in the
Pinacoteca. In the flat and almost womanish sketches of Berto one traces
his persistent admiration for the greater artist. It is as though an
intelligent child had torn the leaves from its mother's sketch-book and
filled in the lines with faithful and laborious colouring. (See Nos. 19
to 26.) But Berto's charm, such as it is, went all wrong when he tried
to paint big subjects. Nos. 16 and 14 are little more than failures.
* * * * *
To anyone who admires the work of the two Alfani, Domenico and Orazio, a
happy hunting-ground exists in the last big rooms of the Pinacoteca. How
it came about that one of Perugino's really lovely frescoes got hung in
this part, we cannot tell, but it is certain that the Nativity (No. 31,
Room XIII.) is one of the loveliest things that remain of Pietro in the
town of Perugia. It is very like our own Nativity in the National
Gallery, faint and fair in colour, calm and true in composition, with a
peculiar lilac colour of crushed grapes throughout the dresses and the
landscape.
It would be impossible to close any account of the school of Perugino
without a slight sketch of the two Alfanis whose intense admiration for
the genius of painting became a fault, and who, through their very
earnestness preserved the corpse from which the life long since had
fled. The Alfanis, Domenico the father, and Orazio the son, had money
and long life. These two happy gifts they employed in the paths of art;
with these two gifts they at length degraded what they really attempted
to exalt. Domenico was such a passionate admirer of Raphael that one of
his historians declared him to have died in the same year as Sanzio.
Mariotti denies this. "However passionate a friend and inseparable a
companion," he urges, "Domenico had not for certain such a crazy folly
as to accompany him to the other world." Domenico far outlived Raphael.
In his long life he absorbed the teaching of many schools, and utterly
obliterated his own personality in the work of other people. His son
Orazio did the same. They went into partnership, started a large school
or studio, and there created the innumerable, rather middle-class
pictures, which cover the walls of the Pinacoteca. Grazio survived his
father about thirty years, and was the first president of the Academy of
Perugia founded in 1573.
* * * * *
One word to close these notes about the painters of the Umbrian school.
Seek out the painters in the places where they painted. Go to Spoleto
for the works of Lo Spagna, to Gubbio for the masterpiece of Nelli, to
Spello for Pinturicchio, to Foligno for the early men who have not even
names. Go in May to Montefalco, when all the green of Umbrian angels'
wings is in the lanes which lead to these. Learn by heart the Umbrian
landscape if you wish to really love and understand the spirit of
Umbrian art. The Pinacoteca of Perugia serves only as a backbone for the
genuine study.[103]