The Great Masters in Painting and Sculpture
Edited by G. C. Williamson
PINTORICCHIO
THE GREAT MASTERS IN PAINTING AND SCULPTURE.
_The following Volumes have been issued, price 5s. net each._
BERNARDINO LUINI. By GEORGE C. WILLIAMSON, Litt.D., Editor of the
Series.
VELASQUEZ. By R. A. M. STEVENSON.
ANDREA DEL SARTO. By H. GUINNESS.
LUCA SIGNORELLI. By MAUD CRUTTWELL.
RAPHAEL. By H. STRACHEY.
CARLO CRIVELLI. By G. MCNEIL RUSHFORTH, M.A., Lecturer in Classics,
Oriel College, Oxford.
CORREGGIO. By SELWYN BRINTON, M.A., Author of "The Renaissance in
Italian Art."
DONATELLO. By HOPE REA, Author of "Tuscan Artists."
PERUGINO. By G. C. WILLIAMSON, Litt.D.
SODOMA. By the CONTESSA LORENZO PRIULI-BON.
LUCA DELLA ROBBIA. By the MARCHESA BURLAMACCHI.
GIORGIONE. By HERBERT COOK, M.A., F.S.A.
MEMLINC. By W. H. JAMES WEALE, late Keeper of the National Art
Library.
PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA. By W. G. WATERS, M.A.
PINTORICCHIO. By EVELYN MARCH PHILLIPPS.
_In preparation._
EL GRECO. By MANUEL B. COSSIO, Litt.D., Ph.D., Director of the Musée
Pédagogique, Madrid.
MICHAEL ANGELO. By CHARLES HOLROYD, Keeper of the National Gallery
of British Art.
FRANCIA. By GEORGE C. WILLIAMSON, Litt.D.
THE BROTHERS BELLINI. By S. ARTHUR STRONG, M.A., Librarian to the
House of Lords.
DÜRER. By HANS W. SINGER, M.A., Ph.D., Assistant Director of the
Royal Print Room, Dresden.
WILKIE. By LORD RONALD SUTHERLAND-GOWER, M.A., F.S.A., Trustee of
the National Portrait Gallery.
TINTORETTO. By J. B. STOUGHTON HOLBORN, M.A. of Merton College,
Oxford.
MANTEGNA. By MAUD CRUTTWELL.
GIOTTO. By F. MASON PERKINS.
BRUNELLESCHI. By LEADER SCOTT.
_Others to follow._
LONDON: GEORGE BELL & SONS
[Illustration:
Hanfstängl, photo. Dresden Gallery
Portrait of a Boy,
by Pintoricchio.]
PINTORICCHIO
BY
EVELYN MARCH PHILLIPPS
[Illustration]
LONDON
GEORGE BELL & SONS
1901
CONTENTS
PAGE
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS vii
BIBLIOGRAPHY xi
PEDIGREE xiii
Chapter I. BIOGRAPHICAL 1
II. DERIVATION AND CHARACTER OF HIS ART 19
III. FIRST PERIOD IN ROME 36
IV. LIFE IN ROME--CONTINUED 55
V. THE BORGIA APARTMENTS 64
VI. THE SAME, AND THE CASTEL SANT' ANGELO 86
VII. SPELLO 100
VIII. SIENA AND THE LAST OF ROME 106
IX. THE LIBRARY AT SIENA 115
X. PANEL PAINTINGS 139
CATALOGUE OF THE WORKS OF PINTORICCHIO 153
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 155
BRITISH ISLES 155
FRANCE 156
GERMANY 156
ITALY 157
SPAIN 162
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 163
INDEX 167
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Portrait of a Boy _Dresden Gallery_ _Frontispiece_ 16
A Miracle of San Bernardino, by Fiorenzo di Lorenzo
_Perugia Gallery_ 24
Four Heads of Women (From the Sketch-Book) _Venice_ 40
The Journey of Moses _Sixtine Chapel, Rome_ 42
The Baptism of Christ _The same_ 44
The Burial of San Bernardino. (From the Buffalini Chapel)
_Church of Ara Cœli, Rome_ 50
The Glorification of San Bernardino, from the same _The same_ 54
The Annunciation _Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome_ 68
Pope Alexander VI. adoring the Risen Christ _The same_ 70
Detail, Figure of the Pope _The same_ 72
Detail from the Assumption of the Virgin--the Kneeling Man
_The same_ 74
The Story of Susanna _The same_ 74
St. Anthony and St. Paul--Hermits _The same_ 76
The Demon Women, a Detail from the above _The same_ 78
The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian _The same_ 78
The Dispute of St. Catherine _The same_ 80
The Figure of St. Catherine, another Detail from the same
_Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome_ 80
Group of Heads, a Detail from the above _The same_ 82
General View of the Hall of Liberal Arts and Sciences
_The same_ 86
The Madonna and Child, with Angels (over the door)
_The same_ 88
Figure representing Arithmetic _The same_ 90
Figure representing Music _The same_ 92
The Adoration of the Shepherds
_Sta. Maria Maggiore, Spello_ 102
The Annunciation _The same_ 104
Portrait of Pintoricchio _The same_ 104
The Knight of Aringhieri _Siena_ 110
Symbolical Scene, from the Pavement in the Cathedral
_The same_ 112
The Return of Ulysses _National Gallery, London_ 114
Study for Fresco I., by Raphael _Venice_ 118
Æneas Piccolomini on his way to the Council at Basel
_The Library, Siena_ 120
Frederick III. crowning Æneas Piccolomini as Poet Laureate
_The same_ 126
Æneas Piccolomini sent by Frederick III. to Pope Eugenius IV.
_The same_ 128
A Group of Men, Detail from Fresco IX. _The same_ 132
Æneas Piccolomini elected Pope under the name of Pius II.
_The same_ 134
Pope Pius II. at Ancona _The same_ 136
The Madonna and Child, with St. John. (From the
large _ancona_) _Perugia Gallery_ 140
The Madonna and Child, with Angels and a Donor
_Duomo, San Severino_ 142
The Madonna and Child _National Gallery, London_ 146
St. Augustine, St. Benedict, and St. Bernard, from
the Reliquary _Berlin Gallery_ 148
The Christ-Child and St John the Baptist. (From
the Holy Family) _Siena Gallery_ 148
Christ bearing the Cross _Pal. Borromeo, Milan_ 150
BIBLIOGRAPHY
VASARI. Ed. G. C. Sansoni. Firenze, 1878.
CROWE AND CAVALCASELLE. "History of Painting in Italy." 1866.
VERMIGLIOLI. "Memorie di Pinturicchio." Perugia, 1837.
EHRLE AND STEVENSON. "Gli affreschi del Pinturicchio nell'
Appartamento, Borgia." 1897.
A. SCHMARSOW. "Raphael und Pinturicchio in Siena." Stuttgart, 1880.
A. SCHMARSOW. "Pinturicchio in Rom." Stuttgart, 1882.
E. STEINMANN. "Pinturicchio," No. 37, Knackfuss Series. 1898.
B. BERENSON. "Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance." 1897.
DEAN KITCHIN. "History of Pius II."
GREGOROVIUS. "History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages."
BIAGIO.
|
BENEDETTO.
|
BERNARDINO,
Painter, called Il Pintoricchio,
_b. circa_ 1454; _d._ 1513;
_m._ Grania, daughter of Niccolò of Modena or Bologna
|
+-----------+---------+----------+-------------+----------+
| | | | | |
GIULIO CAMILLO, FAUSTINA EGIDIA, FAUSTINA, ADRIANA,
CESARE, _b._ 1509 GIROLAMA, or GILIA, _m._ _d._ 1519;
_b._ 1506 in Siena. _b._ 1510 _m._ Filippodi _m._
in Siena. in Siena. Girolamo di Guiseppe
di Paolo, Paolo da
a Perugian, of Giovanni
called Il Deruta. of
Paffo, Perugia
soldier
of the
Piazza
in Siena.
(From MILANESI'S _Appendix to Vasari_.)
PINTORICCHIO
CHAPTER I
BIOGRAPHICAL
Pintoricchio is not one of the most famous painters of the Italian
Renaissance, and perhaps no painter who has left us such a mass of work,
and work of such interest, has attracted so little criticism and
inquiry. From the time of Vasari's slighting biography onwards, he has
been included among minor painters and passed over with very superficial
examination. No separate life of him in English exists, no attempt has
been made to consider his work in anything like exhaustive detail, or to
define his charm. It would be idle to claim for him a place in the first
rank: some may question his right to stand in the second; in some of the
greatest essentials he will not pass muster--yet charm he does possess,
qualities whose fascination draws those who are open to it back to him
again and again with fresh pleasure; and for this, and because he
presents us with so true a type of the Umbrian painter of the
Renaissance, it is worth while trying to unravel his history.
Before we try to disentangle the origin of his art, before we compare
his different periods and examine the paintings he has left us, we must
make some attempt to arrive at his personality, to see the man as he
was, to gain what clue we may, by this means, to the work in which his
life was spent.
Nothing can be more meagre than the few hints we have of his origin and
early history, and yet we can probably construct a pretty correct
outline of their chief features. Vermiglioli in 1837 made a careful
examination of the archives of Perugia and Siena, and was the first to
endeavour to rehabilitate the artist, and to re-awaken that public
interest which was so liberally bestowed on him in his lifetime. He was
born at Perugia about 1454, if we are to believe Vasari, who tells us
that when he died in 1513 he was in his fifty-ninth year. His father was
one Benedetto or Benedecto, and he was christened Bernardino Benedetto
(afterwards shortened to Betto or Betti). The famous saint, Bernardino
of Siena, had died ten years earlier and was canonised in 1550. During
his last years his preaching had made a great sensation in Perugia, and
no doubt numbers of children born at this time were dedicated to him. A
document of 1502 exists at Siena,[1] in which Pintoricchio is styled the
son of Benedetto di Biagio, so that we thus learn the bare names of his
father and grandfather. We have no means of knowing their standing, but
the entire absence of any mention of relatives or inheritance makes it
probable that he came of poor people, and was not blessed with any close
family ties. We know nothing of what was the childhood of the "little
painter," only the nickname of "il sordicchio," the deaf one, suggests
that this infirmity may have been one reason why he was dedicated to an
artist's career; but the deafness could hardly have been very
remarkable, as it is never alluded to otherwise, nor does it appear to
have hampered Bernardino's intercourse with the world. There is a faint
tradition[2] that his home was near the Porto San Christoforo, which,
while hardly worth notice, indicates that his youth was passed in
Perugia.
[1] _Archivio dei Contratti._ Vasari, iii. p. 513, note I._e._
[2] Vermiglioli, p. 8.
From the tendencies which all his life clung about his work, we surmise
that he began his artistic career under one of the miniature painters
who then flourished in Perugia. 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; ... one knows that Fortune has sons
who depend on her help without any virtue of their own, and she is
pleased that they should owe their exaltation to her favour, when they
would never have been known for their own merit."[3] But Vasari
evidently knew nothing of the good or bad fortune of Pintoricchio's
early days, and was merely balancing his own estimate of the artist
against the consideration he received in later years.
[3] Vasari, iii. p. 493.
Natural bent and circumstance combined to form Bernardino Betti into an
Umbrian of the Umbrians, placing him on the less powerful but more
indigenous side of the sharply-divided line which ran through the
artistic life of the country. There is sufficient suggestion of
Benedetto Bonfigli in some of his work, to make it probable that he
joined the school which Bonfigli had established in Perugia in the early
part of the fifteenth century. Vasari speaks of him as an assistant and
friend of the older master. Here he would have been brought into close
contact with Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, who must have been considerably the
senior of Pintoricchio, as he was undertaking important commissions as
early as 1472.[4] It is this master whose influence is most strongly
stamped upon him. Afterwards, as we shall see, he constantly transferred
figures from Fiorenzo's panels to his own, while in the older man's
compositions we can pick out others which have more of Pintoricchio than
Fiorenzo; but the latter, though full of originality and attraction as
he is, never advances beyond a certain point, and always retains
something of the archaic.
[4] Crowe and Cavalcaselle, iii. 153.
It is in 1482 that Bernardino first emerges from the realm of
conjecture, and appears, forming part of that brilliant group which was
gathered together in Rome to decorate the walls of Sixtus IV.'s
newly-built chapel.
Already he may have been confused in Umbria with the very inferior
master, Bernardino Mariotto of Perugia, who lived for many years at San
Severino, where he had a school in the monastery of the old town. His
paintings have often been assigned to his contemporary, and this is
very likely the reason that the latter always signs and calls himself
Pintoricchio. While he endeavoured to guard against being credited with
works he had not produced, he has been robbed of those really due to
him. It is strange indeed that for several centuries the part he took in
such a great work as the Sixtine Chapel should have been ignored, for it
was the success of these frescoes which sufficed to establish his fame
in Rome, and for some years after this we find him in full employment
there. The chapel was completed in 1485, but Pintoricchio's part was
probably finished earlier, and it is at this time that most critics
concur in placing his work in the church of Ara Cœli. He had commended
himself to the patronage and friendship of Domenico della Rovere,
brother of Pope Sixtus, and was a guest at his house in the Palazzo di
SS. Apostoli, where he painted a decoration, and he was also employed at
this time in the Palazzo Colonna. In the two following years,
Pintoricchio was employed in the Belvedere of the Vatican by Pope
Innocent VIII. He painted there the series of pictures of towns owning
the papal sway, which Taja mentions as existing, though in a much
injured condition, in 1750, and which was repainted under Pius VII.[5]
In the years immediately following he was decorating the chapels in
Santa Maria del Popolo, doing much with his own hand, but already
employing assistants and superintending their share.
[5] Vasari, iii. p. 498, note "Milanesi."
A document in the archives of the cathedral at Orvieto, as to which
Vasari knew nothing, or was silent, dated 1492, informs us of an
agreement made with the chapter to paint two evangelists and two
Fathers in the cathedral. The price was to be a hundred ducats. There
was a good deal of coming and going between Rome and Orvieto, and in
that year he was paid fifty ducats for the portion of work done, and
also began a small picture in the tribune, but fell into a violent
quarrel with the ecclesiastics, who averred that the first part of the
work was not painted according to agreement. Their real objection seems
to have been that they were getting frightened at the quantity of gold
and ultramarine employed, which was more than the chapter could afford.
There was some talk of taking the work from him, and it was certainly
interrupted for a time.[6] He was probably very willing to return to
Rome, for a third Pope was now providing him with work,--no less a
personage than Alexander VI., who, as Cardinal Borgia, had already given
great encouragement to the artist in Rome, and who now entrusted
Pintoricchio with the decoration of his private apartments. The quarrel
with the monks at Orvieto must, however, have been made up, and he
returned to finish their transept, for we find Pope Alexander writing to
the Orvietans in March 1494 to beg that they will release Pintoricchio
and let him come back to Rome to finish what he had begun in the Borgia
rooms.
[6] Della Valle. _Storia del duomo d'Orvieto._
In this year the Pope remunerated him by adding to the money paid in the
contracts a grant of an ample piece of land, situated at Chiugi near
Perugia, at an annual rent of thirty baskets of grain.[7] The Borgia
rooms could but just have been completed when, in January 1495, the Pope
was driven to take refuge from the French king's invasion of his city in
the fortified castle of Sant' Angelo. His court painter would naturally
have gone with him, and when the Pope fled to Orvieto and Perugia in the
summer of 1495, Pintoricchio went homewards in his train. In the next
few months, an altar-piece for the monks of the monastery of Santa Maria
degli Angeli must have been under discussion; for in February 1496 the
contract was signed for the great polyptych now in the Gallery at
Perugia. The fulfilment of this contract had to await the master's
leisure; for a month later, on March 15th, he signs a fresh contract
with the Orvietans for two Fathers of the church to be painted in the
great chapel over the principal altar. He was to receive fifty ducats,
six quarters of grain, such wine as might be necessary, and to have the
use of a house, besides what gold and ultramarine he might require. The
archives of the cathedral contain minute records of every payment made,
and on the 15th November of that year he received the last
instalment.[8] The documents contain allusions to other paintings by
him, but the only traces that remain are a St. Gregory, a prophet, and
two angels which have some likeness to his school or his followers.
[7] _Archives of Perugia_, vol. viii. ter.
[8] Della Valle. _Storia del duomo d'Orvieto._
In 1497 we have a deed, issued October 24th, commuting the tax levied
upon the painter's grant of land. In this is recited and set forth
Pintoricchio's complaint that the tax is too heavy, and that it swallows
up all the revenues. The claim is admitted to be well founded on the
part of "a faithful and devoted servant of Alexander and the Church, to
whom a recompense is due for his art in painting and adorning the
apostolic palace and our residence in arc castri Angeli." Instead of the
grain, a yearly tax of two pounds of white wax was adjudged on July
28th, to be paid on the Feast of the Assumption, for two years, by
decree of the Cardinal Camerlengo.[9] A further endorsement shows that
the municipal authorities were inclined to ignore the papal decree; but
a third brief, in May 1498, confirms the tenure of the land and
tenements, and in February 1499 the first commutation is extended for a
further term. After all these gracious concessions, it is surprising to
find the tax-gatherers in the same year again trying to exact the
condoned thirty baskets. Pintoricchio once more appealed to the Pontiff,
with whom he was in high favour, and Alexander ordered that restitution
should be made in effects or money, according to the price at which
grain was valued on the Piazza in Perugia on the first Saturday in
August; and in September we find Pintoricchio receiving of the
vice-treasurer, Bonifazio Coppi, eighty florins in return for the tax
extorted in opposition to the papal behest.[10]
[9] Vermiglioli, App. pp. viii. and x.
[10] Mariotti, p. 131.
While this interesting decision was in the balance, Bernardino was once
more in Rome, and able to plead his own cause, for about July 1497 he
was recalled there, and spent a year frescoing the castle of Sant'
Angelo for the Pope, but in the following year he was back at home, and
finished the polyptych for Santa Maria dei Fossi. Probably about this
time he married, and he may also have visited Spoleto, besides
producing a good many panel paintings, for no very definite work can be
assigned to these years in Perugia. He was very naturally engrossed with
his new wife, and busy with his little property, and not undertaking any
important commissions.
In October of the following year, Cæsar Borgia, son of the painter's
great patron, was encamped at Deruta, the little town that lies out
among the hills, a few miles west of Perugia. Pintoricchio visited him
here while he was resting after his campaign in the Romagna, and
obtained an order desiring the vice-treasurer to get permission for him
to sink a cistern in his house in Perugia. What interests us even more
than this domestic detail is Cæsar's statement that he has "again" taken
into his service Bernardino Pintoricchio of Perosa, whom he always loved
because of his talents and gifts, and he desires that in all things he
shall be treated "as one of ours."[11] Cæsar's expression that he had
"again" taken him into his service, suggests that he had not quite
recently been retained by the Pope.
[11] _Conestabile Archives._
Very soon after his visit to the Borgia's camp, he was in treaty with
the Cardinal of Spello, thirteen miles from Perugia, to decorate the
chapel of his House; but before leaving home he was elected Decemvir of
the city, a proof of how high he stood in repute among his
fellow-citizens. It could only have been an honorary distinction, for
his work in Spello must have taken all his remaining time in Umbria to
accomplish. One short visit he was to pay to his own province, but
early in 1502 the summons reached him which changed the course of his
life. Cardinal Francesco Piccolomini made him the offer which caused him
to move to Siena and begin one of his most important undertakings.
Siena is a long journey from Perugia across the hills and plains that
lie around Lake Thrasymene, past Chiugi, and so through the breadth of
Italy. It brought the painter into new surroundings, and took him quite
out of the beaten track. The long and elaborate contract between the
Cardinal and the painter must have taken no little time to discuss and
agree upon, but it was finished and signed June 29, 1502. During the
following autumn and winter, he made his preparations, gathered his
workmen and assistants together, and by the spring of 1503 was hard at
work in the building, beginning with the ceiling, which we are able,
with tolerable certainty, to determine was nearly completed by the
autumn.
This part of the work may have been just seen by the Cardinal, who
became Pope, September 21st, 1503, dying three weeks later, and bringing
Pintoricchio's work to a standstill. His patron's death freed him for
the time from his inability to take private orders, and he promptly
accepted one from the family of Aringhieri, and between this autumn and
the following August, painted the frescoes in the Chapel of San Giovanni
in Siena Cathedral; while on March 13th, in the spring of 1505, he was
paid for the design of Fortune for the cathedral pavement. Rather before
this, the work in the library had been begun, as it was only in abeyance
for a little over a year; but the death of Cardinal Andrea Piccolomini
in June 1505 again delayed its progress for a short time. Pintoricchio
started thereupon on a visit to Rome, which must have been crowded with
work if he now accomplished the decoration of the choir of Santa Maria
del Popolo, and returned early in 1506 to continue the work in the
library. It now went on with no further hindrance. In May or June 1508
all the compartments were finished, and the building handed over to the
Piccolomini family, from whom the last payment under the contract was
received in January 1509.
There is no document to show exactly when he married, but from the table
in Milanesi's edition of Vasari, a daughter, Adriana, who had married a
Perugian, died in 1519. She, and probably two others, Faustina and
Egidia, must have been born before he left for Siena. There is, however,
no trace in the Perugian archives of his wife or children, and Mariotti,
writing in 1788, suggests that a search among the documents of Siena may
determine the question. Here it is that we find entries of the birth of
those children born after he moved to Siena, Giulio Cesare, Camillo
Giuliano, and a second Faustina. His wife, as we learn from the
petitions she presented after his death, was Grania, daughter of one
Niccolò of Bologna or Modena. From the number of her children, and the
unhappy relations which seem to have existed between husband and wife,
we surmise that Pintoricchio married a woman much younger than himself.
If three children were born before 1502, he probably married about
1496-98, at which time he was living in Perugia, after his return from
Rome, when he would have been forty-two to forty-four years of age.
In the year that his first son was born, Pintoricchio matriculated at
the College of Painters at Perugia. He is there described as
_Bernardinus Becti, detto il Pinturicchio_, whose habitation was at the
Porta San Angelo.[12] In December of the same year, the magistrates of
Siena approve of the Commune of Montemassi making him a donation of
twenty "_moggie_" of land.[13] Fortified, doubtless, by his success in
combating Perugian taxes, he immediately applies to the Council of Siena
to free the grant for thirty years from taxes of "_dazzi_ and
_gabelli_." This was conceded, with the exception of the gate tax. The
petition runs:
[12] Vermiglioli, App. (3).
[13] _Archives of Siena._ Vermiglioli, App. xx. and xxi.
"Bernardino Pintoricchio, who now addresses the most respected officials
(of the Balia), is the servant of your Lordships, and not the least
among renowned painters; for whom, as Cicero has written, the Romans in
early times held but little. Yet after the increase of the empire, and
in consequence of Eastern victories and the conquest of the Greek
cities, they called the best from all parts of the world, not hesitating
to seize all the finest pictures and sculptures which they could
discover. They admitted painting to be supreme, similar to the liberal
arts, and a rival to poesy. And artists being usually esteemed by those
who govern republics, the said Bernardino has elected Sienna to be his
home, hoping to live and reside there; (therefore) confiding in the
clemency of your Lordships, and considering the adverse nature of the
times, the smallness and diminution of profits, and the weight of his
family; having heard also that craftsmen taking up their abode here
receive grants of immunities, he prays exemption for thirty years from
all taxes whatever, whether present or to come."[14]
[14] _Doc. Sen._ iii. 33-4. Trans. Crowe and Cavalcaselle,
vol. iii. p. 285.
In the spring of 1508 he was back across Italy to little Spello, where,
in the transept of Sant' Andrea, he left an altar-painting, a Madonna
and Saints, which does not add materially to his reputation. On a little
stool in the foreground of the picture is painted a letter of Cardinal
Baglioni, dated April 8th, 1508, written from his castle of Rocca di
Zocco, full of affectionate assurances, and asking the painter to return
to Siena. Its inclusion has been imputed to Pintoricchio's vanity; but a
man who had been friends with Popes, and who had long been courted on
all sides, was hardly likely to be uplifted by the friendship of a
simple Cardinal-bishop. It is more likely that he was bitten with a
rather inartistic fancy for painting objects lying about, to deceive the
eye, and hit upon this as an appropriate one.
He now paid his last visit to Rome: Pope Julius II. had summoned him,
together with Perugino, Signorelli, and others, to consider the
decoration of the Vatican rooms. Giambattista Caporali, the historian,
speaks of a supper at which they were all present at the house of
Bramante. Their host was the man who had introduced young Raphael to the
Pope, and Pintoricchio, among the rest, had the mortification of seeing
himself superseded in the city where he had been foremost a few years
earlier. He and Signorelli returned to Siena together, and the master
of Cortona stood sponsor to the child born in January 1509. In October,
Pintoricchio had sold a house in the third ward of the city to Pandolfo
Petrucci for 420 florins. He was in close contact at this time with that
great merchant prince, and was employed with Signorelli on Petrucci's
new palace, where he painted the frescoes, of which one, the "Return of
Ulysses," in the National Gallery, is all that remains. We find him
buying land in Siena and selling it in Perugia, making his will, and
arranging his affairs. In the last year of his life he painted that
brilliant and tender little picture of "Christ bearing the Cross," now
in the Borromeo Palace at Milan. He was suspicious and unhappy about his
wife's behaviour, and a fresh will was made, to which a codicil was
added in September and another in October. In the first he deprived her
of some of the money he had already left her, but he returned it in the
last addition.
Vasari's story of the cause of his death, which took place December
11th, 1513, can be nothing but a fable. He tells us that Pintoricchio
was executing some work for the Fathers of San Francesco, and being
hampered by a heavy bureau in the room assigned to him, insisted on
having it moved. In the transit it broke open, and a treasure of gold
was discovered in the secret drawer, so much to the chagrin of the
painter that he never held up his head again. The friends who knew the
painter in Siena do not allude to any such occurrence; and the popular
master, entrusted with more commissions than he could execute, well paid
and honoured by all men, was not likely to be upset by the sight of
some gold coins, even if he could persuade himself that he had any right
to them. The real circumstances of his death were sadder, if less
sensational. Sigismondo Tizio, a Sienese historian, writer of a mass of
almost unedited matter, who was his attached friend and his neighbour in
the parish of San Vincenzo and Sant' Anastasia, has left a record of his
last illness, in which he accuses his wife Grania of causing his death
by her neglect. Tizio says that she went about with her lover, Girolamo
di Paolo, nicknamed il Paffo, a soldier of the Piazza at Siena, and that
Bernardino was shut up and left to die of starvation; that some women
heard his cries and went to his assistance, and that it was from them
that Tizio afterwards learned these particulars. From Tizio's way of
describing it he seems to accuse her of a deliberate attempt to starve
her husband; but as no proceedings were ever taken against her, and she
succeeded in peace to her inheritance, we may gather that she was not
guilty of actually criminal conduct, though her neglect was sufficient
to hasten the death of a man attacked by serious illness and needing
careful nursing. Bernardino Betti lies buried in the Parish Church of
San Vincenzo, joining the Oratory of the Contrade of the Ostrich. In
1830 the Abbé de Angelis put up a plate with an inscription to his
memory. Mariotti speaks of a Giovanni di Pintoricchio who was a canon of
the Cathedral of Perugia in 1525; but Pintoricchio's own sons would have
then been too young to hold such a post, and we hear nothing in later
years of his descendants.
After his death Grania lived on in Siena, and two years after, as his
executor and trustee, sold two lots of land to one of the Chigi for 1677
florins. Again, in the following year, she sought permission to sell the
land which was the portion of her daughter Faustina, and she makes a
will which is dated May 22nd, 1518. The man who was said to be her lover
afterwards married her daughter Egidia.
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; but he was a thin, dark man who
very possibly looked less than his years, or he may have purposely
represented himself so, as we notice this in other portraits. The face
is an interesting and sensitive one, with speaking eyes and a melancholy
expression. In the striking head which he has signed and placed as a
picture on the walls of the Virgin's chamber in the chapel of the
Baglioni at Spello, the face has sharpened and aged considerably, though
it still looks young for a man of fifty-two. The lines have deepened,
the mouth is compressed, and the face wears a look of ill-health, almost
of suffering. It has the dark, arched brows of the artist, and clever,
observant eyes which look out at us, sideways, tending to give a
suspicious look, though probably it was only that he saw himself so in a
mirror. Again, he stands in the row of portraits in the fresco of the
"Canonisation of St. Catherine," in the Library at Siena. This face,
too, has an expression of bitterness and melancholy--pinched lips, and
sad, regretful eyes.[15] The self-conscious expression of all leads us to
suspect that his was a self-tormenting, morbid nature, such as the
artistic temperament and keen sense of beauty might well have combined
with a sickly body to produce. In the eyes, too, it is easy to read that
fantastic touch which came out in his love for story and for the
grotesque, and perhaps there is something of that aloofness which the
deafness, which led to his nickname, so often gives.
[15] In the group of Apostles in the "Assumption" at Naples is one,
the fifth on the left, which he is said to have meant for himself,
but it is less characteristic than those already noticed.
That he was a lovable man is, I think, evident. We hear of no quarrels
with his fellow-artists; Perugino secured him some of the best positions
in the Sixtine, Signorelli was his child's sponsor. He had clearly the
art of managing his assistants, who everywhere worked intelligently
under him. With Fiorenzo his artistic relations must have been of the
closest. Pope Alexander valued him, and Cæsar's mention is an
affectionate one, while the letter of Cardinal Baglioni is full of
friendliness. Besides this, few things are more interesting in the
history of artists' friendships than the close confidence and affection
which all study of the frescoes at Siena convinces us existed between
him and the young Raphael. Sigismondo Tizio, in his MS., gives his
opinion that Bernardino surpassed Perugino as a painter, but that he had
less sense and prudence than Vannucci, and was given to empty chatter.
A small number of Pintoricchio's works cannot be dated, and we must be
satisfied with mentioning them, and considering the times at which they
might have been produced.
His name is written variously in the documents of the time. In the
grants of land signed by Cardinal Camerlengo, it is Pentoricchio, and
Pentorichio on the fresco of Geometry in the Borgia rooms. Cardinal
Baglioni writes it Pintorichio. In Grania's petition it appears as
Pinturicchio. He himself signs his last picture, the "Cross-bearing
Christ" in the Palazzo Borromeo, Pintoricchio, and to this form I have
adhered. In the documents he is usually styled Messer Bernardino.