Influenced in the beginning by the Sienese, the Umbrian school of
painting remained almost entirely religious. The Renaissance passed it
by as in a dream, and although in the work of Perugino you find a
wonderful and original painter, a painter of landscape too, it is rather
in the earlier men, Ottaviano Nelli, whose beautiful work at Gubbio is
like a sunshine on the wall of S. Maria Nuova; Gentile da Fabriano,
whose Adoration of the Magi is one of the treasures of the Accademia
delle Belle Arti; of Niccolò da Foligno, and of Bonfigli whose
flower-like pictures are for the most part in the Pinacoteca at Perugia,
than in Perugino, or Pinturicchio, or Raphael, that you come upon the
most characteristic work of the school.
There was no Giotto, no Duccio even, in Umbria. Painting for its own
sake, or for the sake of beauty or life, never seems to have taken root
in that mystical soil; it is ever with a message of the Church that she
comes to us, very simply and sweetly for the most part, it is true, but
except in the work of Piero della Francesca, who was not really an
Umbrian at all, and in that of his pupil Melozzo da Forli, the work of
the school is sentimental and illustrative, passionately beautiful for a
moment with Gentile da Fabriano; clairvoyant almost in the best work of
Perugino; most beloved, though maybe not most lovely, in the marvellous
work of Raphael, who, Umbrian though he be, is really a Roman painter,
full of the thoughts of a world he had made his own.
Here, in the Uffizi, Gentile da Fabriano is represented by parts of an
altar-piece, four isolated saints, St. Mary Magdalen, St. Nicholas of
Bari, St. John Baptist, and St. George. It is rather in the beautiful
work of Piero della Francesca, and of Signorelli, in the rare and lovely
work of Melozzo da Forli, in the sweet and holy work of Perugino, the
perfect work of Raphael, that Umbria is represented in the Uffizi, than
in the mutilated altar-piece of Gentile da Fabriano.
Piero della Francesca was born about 1416 at the little town of Borgo
San Sepolcro, just within the borders of Tuscany towards Arezzo.[124] He
was a great student of perspective, a friend of mathematicians, of Fra
Luca Paccioli, for instance, who later became the friend of Leonardo da
Vinci. His work has force, and is always full of the significance of
life. Influenced by Paolo Uccello, founding his work on a really
scientific understanding of certain laws of vision, of drawing, his work
seems to have been responsible for much that is so splendid in the work
of Signorelli and Perugino. Nor is he without a faint and simple beauty,
which is altogether delightful in his pictures in the National Gallery,
for instance the Nativity and the Baptism of our Lord. Here, in the
Uffizi, are two portraits from his hand--Count Federigo of Urbino, and
his wife Battista Sforza (1300), painted in 1465. Splendid and full of
confidence, they are the work of a man who is a consummate draughtsman,
and whose drawing here, at any rate, is a thing of life. On the back of
these panels Piero has painted an allegory, or a trionfo, whose meaning
no one has yet read. The Uffizi has lately been enriched by a work of
his pupil, that rare painter, Melozzo da Forli. Two panels of the
Annunciation, very beautiful in Colour and full of something that seems
strange, coming from that Umbrian country, so mystical and simple, hang
now with the portraits of Piero. Nor is the work of Melozzo da Forli's
pupil, Marco Palmezzano, whose facile work litters the Gallery of Forli,
wanting, for here is a Crucifixion (1095) from his hand, certainly one
of his more important pictures.
Pietro Vanucci, called Il Perugino, was born about 1446 at Castel della
Pieve, some twenty-six miles from Perugia. The greatest master of the
Umbrian School, for we are content to call Raphael a Roman painter, his
work, so sweet and lovely at its best, is at its worst little better
than a repetition of his own mannerisms. Here, in the Uffizi, however,
we have four of his best works--the three great portraits, Francesco
delle Opere (287), Alessandro Braccesi (1217), and the Portrait of a
Lady (1120), long given to Raphael, but which Mr. Berenson assures us is
Perugino's; and the Madonna and Child of the Tribuna, painted in 1493.
The Francesco delle Opere was perhaps his first portrait, full of
virility beyond anything else in his work, save his own portrait at
Perugia. For many years this picture, owing, it might seem, to a mistake
of the Chevalier Montalvo, was supposed to represent Perugino himself,
so that the picture was hung in the Gallery of the Portraits of
Painters. At last an inscription was discovered on the back of the
picture, which reads as follows: _1494, D'Luglio Pietro Perugino Pinse
Franco Delopa_.
Francesco delle Opere was a Florentine painter, the brother of Giovanni
delle Corniole. He died at Venice, and it may well be that it was at
Venice that Perugino first met him. Perugino's picture shows us
Francesco, a clean-shaven and young person, holding a scroll on which is
written, "Trineta Deum;" the portrait is a half-length, and the hands
are visible. In the background is a characteristic country of hill and
valley under the deep serene sky, the light and clear golden air that we
see in so much of his work. The Portrait of a Lady (1120), long given to
Raphael, comes to the Uffizi from the Grand Ducal Villa of Poggio a
Caiano; it was supposed to be the portrait of Maddalena Strozzi, wife of
Angela Doni. The portrait shows us a young woman, in a Florentine dress
of the period, while around her neck is a gold chain, from which hangs a
little cross. The Portrait of a Young Man (1217) is painted on wood, and
is life size.
The Madonna and Child, with two Saints, was painted in 1493 for the
Church of S. Domenico at Fiesole, and was placed in the Uffizi by the
Grand Duke Peter Leopold in 1756. Madonna sits a little indifferent on a
throne under an archway, holding the Child, who turns towards St. John
Baptist as he gazes languidly on the ground; while St. Sebastian, a
beautiful youth, stands on the other side, looking upwards, and though
the arrows have pierced his flesh, he is still full of affected grace,
and is so occupied with his prayers that he has not noticed them. On the
base of the throne, Perugino has written his name, _Petrus Perusinus
Pinxit, An. 1493_. It is in such a work as this that Perugino is really
least great. Painted to order, as we may think, it is so full of
affectation, of a kind of religiosity, that there is no room left for
sincerity. And yet how well he has composed this picture after all, so
that there is no sense of crowding, and the sun and sky are not so far
away. Is it perhaps that in an age that has become suspicious of any
religious emotion we are spoiled for such a picture as this, finding in
what it may be was just a natural expression of worship to the simple
Friars of S. Domenico long ago, all the ritualism and affectation in
which we should find it necessary to hide ourselves before we might
approach her, as she seemed to them, a Queen enthroned, _causa nostrae
Laetitiae_, between two saints whose very names we find it difficult to
remember? How often in our day has Perugino been accused of insincerity,
yet it was not so long ago when he lived. Almost all his life he was
engaged in painting for the Church those things which were most precious
in her remembrance. If men found him insincere, it is strange that among
so much that was eager and full of sincerity his work was able to hold
its own. His pupil Raphael, that most beloved name, is represented here
in the Uffizi only by the Madonna del Cardellino (1129); for the other
works attributed to him in the Tribuna are not his. The picture is in
his early manner, and was painted about 1548. It has, like so much of
Raphael's work, suffered restoration; and indeed these compositions from
his hand no longer hold us as they used to do, whether because of that
repainting or no, I know not. It is as a portrait painter we think of
Raphael to-day, and as the painter of the Stanze at Rome; and therefore
I prefer to speak of him with regard to his work in the Pitti Gallery
rather than here. With him the Umbrian School passed into the world.