DERIVATION AND CHARACTER OF HIS ART
Umbria is a land of late development in the history of Italian painting,
and of a sharp division in the character of its art. No town of the
importance of Siena, second only to Florence, held sway in that part of
Italy, nor do we find any name in its early history which we can place
side by side with Giotto, Orcagna, or Duccio di Buoninsegna. It is
difficult to account for this: the Umbrian plains were indeed ravaged
again and again with blood and carnage, were seized upon, now by this
party, and now by that; but all acquaintance with the art of the
Renaissance bears in upon us that art as a rule only flourished more
strongly when fed by war and ruin. One tyrant after another, as he
rested from his conquests, became the patron of the painters. Pictures
were painted to immortalise great victories, the altar-piece upon which
the fame of Duccio chiefly hangs, was ordered by the Consiglio of Siena
as a thank-offering to the Virgin after the battle of Monte Aperto.
The accounts of the cathedral at Orvieto give us names of artists who
devoted themselves to its decoration towards the end of the fourteenth
century--others were working in Perugia, painting effigies of traitors,
hanging head downwards on the walls of the Palazzo Pubblico, but we have
no reason to rank them higher than those who have left traces of their
work in the little votive chapels that lie in the hills and
out-of-the-way corners of Umbria. Some of these, going back to 1393, are
not without a character of their own, guiltless indeed, of technique,
but naïve, vivid, and full of energy; yet they show little of that
gradual growth which marks the Florentine school, nor do we find in them
any trace of the fine, precise touch, which the early Sienese painters
drew from the school of Byzantium. According to Mariotti, the art of
miniature painting and illumination was carried on with great enthusiasm
in Perugia, in the fourteenth century. Dante speaks of Oderisio of
Gubbio:
"--Non se' tu Oderisi,
L'Onor d'Agobbio, e l'onor di quell' arte,
Ch' alluminare è chiamata in Parisi?"
Then, when the fifteenth century was unfolding, two streams of art sweep
across the province, distinct, yet mighty, mingling like the waters of
the Rhine and Rhone. The many scattered towns of Umbria led to a far
greater variety of type, individuality was more frequently maintained,
influences spread more fitfully and partially than in those parts of
Italy where all studied together, and practice and theory flew like
wildfire from one to the other, emulations flourished, traditions were
quickly formed and earnestly followed.
Gentile da Fabriano stands forth among the dearth of talent in Umbria at
the dawn of the century, as the one master who was great enough to add
realism to glowing colour and vivacity of fancy, and who, taking the
old missal-painting character as a groundwork, could transplant all the
pride of pageantry of the Middle Ages on to his panels, and give us in
the gold brocades and velvet robes, in fairy princes and beautiful
ladies, tropic birds and strange beasts, such a scene of joyous
gallantry that, as in the "Adoration of the Magi," we can hear the
tinkle of bells and the clang of gilded trappings, as the long
procession winds down the gay hillside.
After a space, while a dainty colourist like Ottaviano Nelli painted
enlarged miniatures and vapid angel faces, there arose a few miles off,
at Arezzo, one of the strongest of masters; Piero della Francesca set a
star of grand simplicity as a constraining guide, calm and broad, before
those men who had the gift of the open eye. The character of that art
was as exacting as it was scientific. It was as much geometrical and
mathematical as artistic, and was occupied more with problems than with
religious feeling. Its power was felt over a wide area, and moved even
those who were least naturally alive to it. There seemed a likelihood
that Umbrian art would, on the one hand, become absorbed in the
Florentine character, hardly distinguishable from it, and, on the other,
degenerate into puerile prattle; but there had wandered to Montefalco,
one from Florence, who, to the enlightenment and the conscious effort
drawn from those who clustered round Donatello and Masaccio, added a
temper which appealed directly to the native feeling of Umbria. Benozzo
Gozzoli was not a great painter, but his talent for narrative painting
set a new model before those whose aptitude in that direction responded
to the impulse. A school arose which combined in curious harmony the
love of decorative detail of the miniature pictures, the space effects
of Piero's large and airy settings, and the story-telling proclivities
of the naïve and garrulous Florentine.
Though Pintoricchio's early years are obscure, little doubt can exist as
to his artistic derivation from Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, who combined the
characteristics of the newly developed school in a pre-eminent degree.
Rumohr ascribes Pintoricchio's style primarily to the school of Niccolò
da Foligno. This attribution is founded partly on the "Altar-piece of
Santa Maria dei Fossi," the arrangement of which is similar to some of
Niccolò's great anconas, the Madonna and Child enthroned in the centre,
saints in panels on either side, a Pietà above, which divides an
Annunciation into two parts. The types in this last scene certainly
resemble Niccolò's, and were constantly repeated by Bernardino; but the
angels in the Pietà are from Fiorenzo, and the whole spirit is opposed
to that of the intense and austere Folignate. It was painted, too, so
long after Bernardino's art was fully formed that it can hardly serve to
illustrate any early influence. No doubt, when he visited Foligno at
this time, he took many ideas from what Niccolò had left there.
Something too he owed to Benedetto Bonfigli; the cheerful naïveté, the
quaint adornments of dress and garland which attract us in Bonfigli, are
traits which we find in Pintoricchio. The little oval, pointed face,
with its arched brows, and small, close shut mouth, the type to which
Bonfigli is constant, is that to which Pintoricchio adheres for his
Madonna and angels; but this type is to be found too in Fiorenzo's
earlier work, as in his "Adoration of the Child" in the Gallery in
Perugia. If we compare this picture with Pintoricchio's "Nativity" in
San Girolamo's Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome, we see at a
glance the resemblance that underlies a few superficial variations. The
whole construction of the two groups is similar. The Madonna's bent
head, elbows squared, joined palms and finger-tips, the Child, lying
partly on His Mother's robe, the position of the grey-bearded St. Joseph
and the shepherds--everywhere Pintoricchio has been guided by the
earlier master, though instead of the donor and two young men, who may
have been his sons, and who kneel with their great hound behind them, he
has substituted St. Jerome and his lion, and shepherds of a more
acceptedly religious type, while the group of singing angels overhead is
transferred from Fiorenzo's panel to that other Nativity at Spello.
Over the door of the Sala del Censo in the Palazzo Pubblico at Perugia,
is a lunette of a Madonna and Child by Fiorenzo, which might well be
Pintoricchio's own. It has his full touch and copious brush. We find the
Mother again in the exquisite little fresco over the door of the Hall of
Arts and Sciences in the Borgia Apartments, transplanted almost without
alteration of line or expression; while the two angels on either side
are those which he uses to support the dead Christ in the Pietà at the
top of the polyptych painted for Santa Maria dei Fossi.
We have no trace of Pintoricchio himself ever having visited Florence,
but the water flowed to him none the less from the fountainhead, and he
assimilated it in his own manner. Fiorenzo, we feel sure, must have been
there, and that in those years when Verrocchio and Pollaiuolo approached
most nearly to one another; and it was Fiorenzo, and not Perugino, who
was the channel through which Florentine influence filtered to
Pintoricchio. We recognise Verrocchio in the wide and swollen nostrils,
the broad head, the hooking of the little finger, and the treatment of
the hair which Fiorenzo adopts; while we perceive that Pollaiuolo has
aroused a wish to show more animated action. From Pollaiuolo, too, comes
the careful handling of brocaded stuffs, the little, crab-like,
clutching hands, the delight in using the costume of the day in all its
fantastic picturesqueness. Even more striking is the architectural
influence which Fiorenzo conveyed to Pintoricchio. The masters of Umbria
became singularly alive to the charm of airy architectural space, and
such classic settings as we may date from Brunelleschi's visit to Rome
in 1403, and more especially attribute in their working out, to the
high, imaginative faculty and Greek spirit of Leo Battista Alberti,
whose spacious arcades are often used merely as decoration. At Urbino,
in the court of the Ducal Palace, the Umbrians had one example of the
highest interest: here was the taste which Lauranna drew from the
Florentines, and which passed onwards to Bramante. Piero della Francesca
shows, in his "Flagellation" at Urbino, how keenly he feels the charm of
placing groups in this wide, distinguished setting; but none assimilates
his teaching so fully in those early days as Fiorenzo, whose
remarkable series of small panels of the miracles of San Bernardino,
give us, as Dr. Schmarsow says, "the first step, without which
Pintoricchio is unthinkable."[16]
[16] "Pintoricchio in Rom."
The natural features of Umbrian scenery, its high-skied plains, its wide
valleys, account in a measure for the pre-eminent feeling for space
shown by its artists, and for their power to give air and atmosphere to
those lofty structures in which they love to place their personages.
These little panels, painted at Fiorenzo's finest period, are sharp and
strong, yet fine as miniatures. The figures stand well on the stage. The
point of sight is very low, at scarce a third of the whole, so that we
have an undue proportion of airy surrounding, though all is on such a
small scale. The perspective drawing shows how well-fitted Fiorenzo was
to ground his pupil accurately in this, however insufficient his study
of anatomy may have been. The drawing of the architecture is fine and
true throughout, but in the figures, even if we allow for variations in
Fiorenzo himself, we can hardly avoid seeing two different hands. They
have all the charm of his manner, a manner essentially Umbrian, while we
see a very distinct spirit, a spirit which was shared by Bonfigli, and
by such a lesser master as Boccatis da Camerino, a naïve and cheerful
tone, a direct simplicity, which is as far removed from the melancholy
which broods in the eyes of the rapt saints of Siena, as it is from the
scientific temper that ruled within sound of the Arno. Many of the
figures are childish in their desire to express emotion, and are almost
grotesque in detail, the hair is in a mop, exaggerated till it looks
like a huge bird's nest, the hands are cramped and claw-like, but here
and there we meet with graceful, well-proportioned beings, keeping their
slender grace, without the angular and unpleasing length of limb which
marks their companions. In the panel where San Bernardino raises a youth
from the dead, a child playing with a dog recalls Pintoricchio's _putti_
on the pilasters at Siena. The young man on the right in the same scene,
is supple and gracefully draped; a contrast to the wooden movements and
stiff draperies of his fellow-pages. Even better is the youth reasoning,
in a repetition of the same miracle, with his hand upon his hip and a
dark cap perched upon his rippled curls.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_] [_Picture Gallery, Perugia_
A MIRACLE OF SAN BERNARDINO
(By Fiorenzo di Lorenzo)]
We begin to speculate as to whether Pintoricchio, who was a young man of
twenty-two at this time, was helping Fiorenzo; and to ask, Have we here
the sign of that talent which was marked by Perugino, with whom he must
have been for some years, before he was chosen as his chief assistant in
the Sixtine Chapel? Above all, Pintoricchio's landscape is derived from
Fiorenzo. The open distance, cut up by small hills and trees, the
winding streams flowing through the valleys, and, most characteristic,
the poised and toppling rocks, forming archways and overhanging masses,
often set about with houses and peopled with tiny figures. An
examination of the "Crucifixion" in the Borghese, illustrates the
difficulty at this time of distinguishing between Fiorenzo and his
pupil. The hard brightness of colour, the drawing of the crucified
figure and that of St. Christopher, the heavily marked folds of
drapery, the landscape--all recall Fiorenzo; but the figure and head of
St. Jerome, the hands, the expressive head of St. Christopher, the free
and natural attitude of the Child, are something better than we look for
in the earlier painter. If we may really accept this panel, as both
Morelli and Berenson assert, as Pintoricchio's work, we may place it as
his earliest on his arrival in Rome. The St. Christopher and the Moses
of the meeting with the angel in the Sixtine, seem drawn from the same
model. The round forehead, full mouth, shape of jaw and broad throat are
identical, and it is a very individual face.
His knowledge of architecture, his composition of landscape, the type of
many of his figures, Pintoricchio derived from Fiorenzo, and Fiorenzo's
was the influence that remained with him most strongly; but though
permeating him less thoroughly, less akin to his own temper, Perugino,
his elder by only four years, a much greater master, both as regards
form and colour, had something to say to his development. We cannot tell
when the two first came into contact, but Morelli considers that
Perugino went to Florence about 1470. Milanesi, in his notes on
Perugino's life by Vasari, says that he received a commission to paint
in the Palazzo Pubblico in Perugia in 1475. He was certainly working in
1478 at Cerqueto, in Umbria, so that most likely it was about that date
that Pintoricchio joined him, which would have given them at least four
years together, before the time came to go to Rome.
We have so little knowledge of any work of Pintoricchio's before his
Roman period, that it is difficult to certainly assign paintings to
this time. The "Crucifixion" shows no trace of Perugino, but the boy's
head at Dresden, which Morelli believes to be an early work, has the
solid character and realism which distinguish Perugino's portraits. His
influence comes out fully developed in the Sixtine frescoes. That the
two men had been working together for some time is obvious, not only by
the importance of the share with which the younger was entrusted, but
also by the number of drawings which he prepared for Perugino's own
frescoes. The elder painter's guiding hand is apparent in the draping,
simpler and larger than that of Fiorenzo, the more careful drawing and
calmer dignity.
These frescoes might possibly be taken for Perugino's, but scarcely for
Fiorenzo's; and though Pintoricchio still adheres to the traditions of
the latter in his treatment of the details of landscape, he begins to
formulate his own scheme of colour and composition. In his angels flying
forward from above, on either side of a group of sacred persons,
Perugino is copied almost stroke for stroke (allowing for Pintoricchio's
heavier touch) in the assimilation of _motifs_ drawn from older masters.
The fold of drapery falling between the knees and narrowing to a point,
the over-sleeve flying out in a sweeping curve, the draped tunic and the
fluttering ribbons, all become a formula of Perugino's manner--adopted
by all his followers--Lo Spagna, Tiberio d'Assisi, and the rest. Yet,
where the treatment approaches most nearly, there remains a constantly
differing type. Perugino, in a half-profile, almost invariably inclines
the head one way or another, giving to the eye a peculiar ecstatic
upward gaze. Pintoricchio rarely uses this attitude. In his drawing of
St. John, for Perugino's fresco, of the giving of the keys, this is just
the change the older master, on adopting it, has made to suit his fancy.
Pintoricchio has an ineradicable tendency to bring the knees of his
figures together. They sway with a peculiar, knock-kneed grace. If we
contrast the central group in the "Baptism of Christ" in the Sixtine,
with those of Perugino at Rouen, or that at Foligno, painted many years
later, we note the sweep inward from the hips, and outward from the
knees in the first, while the inclined head and upward gaze in
Perugino's St. John gives place to a more simple and direct expression
in that of his pupil. We are always conscious, too, of a less strong,
less confident spirit--one more nervous, more personally reflective of
moods and idiosyncrasies.
The golden atmospheric effects which were Perugino's greatest gift to
art, the feeling for distance, and for the sun-warmed calm of summer,
taught Pintoricchio new methods, modified without effacing the teaching
of Fiorenzo, and certainly led to a more natural treatment. That
Fiorenzo was impressed by the vigorous art of Signorelli, his neighbour
of Cortona, is to be seen in his late work, "The Adoration of the Magi."
The young men, more strongly drawn than is customary with him, the kings
in Eastern dress, the heads of Joseph and of the old king, the drawing
of the hands and the Madonna's draperies--all show a freer and closer
study of nature, all point to some fresh impulse, the impression of a
strong talent upon a weaker one.
The problems which absorbed the great master of Cortona had never much
attraction for Pintoricchio, who had not a scientific mind, and whose
artistic education, deficient to begin with, was brought to a premature
end by his sudden popularity. Yet something he drew from Signorelli, a
firmer treatment of the youths in hose and doublet, some attempt to
study limbs and muscle. The series left by Benozzo Gozzoli at
Montefalco, the paintings of Perugino and Signorelli, were the best
examples of form which came in Pintoricchio's way. They could not
succeed in making him very strong, but when he draws frankly from the
life, you need hardly wish for more telling portraits.
It would be absurd to claim for him sublime creative power, tactile
values, mastery over form and movement. He has none of these. His
persons rarely stand firmly upon both feet; his pages, his kings and
queens, are too often drawn and even coloured like playing-cards; his
crowds are motley and ill-arranged. The dry and purely scientific
student of the schools of Italy will find it more than easy to
demonstrate Pintoricchio's shortcomings: it is less simple to analyse
the charm that triumphs in spite of them, and which gives keen pleasure
to one side of the artistic nature.
J. A. Symonds says of him that he is a kind of Umbrian Gozzoli, and in
his clear and fluent presentation of contemporary life brings us into
close relation with the men of his own time. No one loved better than
Gozzoli to assemble contemporary celebrities; and in the feeling for
incidents of everyday life, in the joy of living, in fondness for
garrulous narrative, his frescoes must have been full of suggestion for
the Umbrian master of the next half-century, who, in his love for the
narrative and the picturesque, surpassed all who had gone before. In
Florence, if he had made his trial there, he might have gained more of
strong and true study, he might have learned the laws of grouping, of
ærial perspective, he might have gained a better knowledge of anatomy,
yet in mastering all these, he might have lost something that he
possesses: that freshness of feeling which is the spring and sap of all
art, that young and winning joy that carries him through scenes of
magnificence without losing sense and spirit.
There is in the art of Pintoricchio a direct simplicity of expression
and gesture that saves him from conventionality and cloying sweetness.
His persons are not above criticism as far as technicalities are
concerned, but they have in them this, that they are occupied and
absorbed in the business in hand. You may fancy at first that they are
artificial, but that is merely their environment; they themselves are
simple, they do not pose or look upwards or out of the picture with an
affected appeal for admiration. This quality gives to Pintoricchio a
truthfulness where he lacks depth. To the last he has a sincerity which
underlies his conventionality, just as his dainty care in detail
counterbalances his want of freedom and rhythm. His forms lack the
nobility of Perugino's, his religious emotion is less deep, but he is
not self-conscious, he has a freshness and raciness which saves him from
fatiguing by monotonous sweetness. He does not make his paintings a
series of excuses for the solution of scientific problems, so that they
are more spontaneous, more the outcome of the man's natural unfettered
inclination, than are the works of some of those who made greater
discoveries in the field of painting.
In the picturesque qualities of his work he is completely a child of the
Renaissance. Perhaps none harmonises better with the rich and lavish
beauty which haunts us still in every little town of Italy. His feeling,
sumptuous yet exquisite, his treatment, naïve yet distinguished, is the
prerogative of that age of fresh perception, and of unspoiled
acquaintance with the beautiful. It is the fairy-tale spirit that so
endears him to us. Like the mediæval singers of romance, he guides us
through scenes that have a glamour of some day of childhood, when they
may have seemed real and possible. The wistful, wide-eyed youths, the
tender, dainty Madonnas and angels, the grave, richly-dressed saints and
bishops, might all stand for princes, for maidens, and magicians in some
enchanted realm of fairy. He does not take us into the region of the
tragic, but his fancy, his invention, and resource are fertile and
untiring; he leads us on, dazzling, entertaining us with a child-like
amusement, disarming criticism by a lovable quality which enlightens us
as to the natural sensibility of the painter's mind, a sort of
penetrating sweetness with which he can endow his creations. Perhaps the
truest explanation of his charm is to be found in the union of two
incongruous elements. The artificial and mannered grace, the search
after the exquisite and the splendid, joined to the naïve and childish
simplicity, the freshness and arcadian fancy of the Umbrian school. It
is such a combination as enchants us in a child masquerading in gorgeous
robes, or in a wild honeysuckle dancing over a richly-carved marble
column. Certain it is, that here we possess the very cream of that
fantastic aspect of the Renaissance in conjunction with the most
distinctive features of purely Umbrian art.
Mr. Berenson has given us a fine appreciation of Pintoricchio's feeling
for space and for space-decoration. In this, so Umbrian a
characteristic, he was a worthy follower of Fiorenzo, the not unworthy
second to Perugino, and a forerunner of Raphael. The ample and spacious
setting of his groups takes off from their cramped and crowded effect.
Where the action is awkward, or the colour heavy, the whole spirit is
lightened and lifted as you breathe the air of those delicious
landscapes, or wander in imagination under those high-poised arcades, or
look out from a palace chamber at the freedom and sweet breezes of a
mountain distance. It is the more remarkable that Pintoricchio is able
to give us this charm of landscape, as he adheres to his early training,
and finishes the most distant parts in delicate detail.
It is as a decorator that he holds his own most successfully among his
contemporaries. It soon became apparent that no one could cover the
walls of palace or chapel with an ornamentation so rich and gay, so
advantageous to the position, so homogeneous in character. To find any
_tout ensemble_ to compare as decoration with the Borgia Apartments we
must look at early mosaics, at the opulence of the little church of San
Prassede, or the peacock hues of San Vitale at Ravenna. To estimate his
achievement we must weigh what he has made of those rooms, "si
desespèrément carrées," or of the oblong and barn-like space of the
Libreria in Siena.
He is mainly empirical rather than scientific, even in his most
successful moments, but that his want of drawing was due to insufficient
study of the nude is shown by the fact that his touch is fine and
strong, his faces, hands and feet, always well and firmly drawn, his
outlines delicate and decisive. He individualises his faces, and the
bystanders in his crowded scenes show a most interesting variety and
reality.
When not painting fresco he is constant to the use of _tempera_.
Unfortunately, he is too much given to sacrifice the transparency and
depth of his colour by a lavish use of retouching _à secco_. In order to
gratify his love for brilliancy, he produces an opaque surface, and is
apt to give us a sort of splendid gaiety in exchange for real depth. His
use of his gorgeous pigments is extremely skilful, especially towards
the middle period. In the Sixtine Chapel frescoes, he has hardly let
himself go, and in the Siena Library he inclines to be gaudy and
glaring; but in many of his scenes the greens and peacock-blues, the
rich, soft rose-pinks, the purples and autumn gold are those of a man
whose nature was keenly alive to the joy of colour. His use of embossed
gold is dictated by the same natural bent towards the gay and
decorative. This small, mean-looking, deaf man was rarely sensitive to
fulness of life, to splendour, and the delight of the eye, and wherever
he has covered a wall with his work, or left a panel or an altar-piece,
we get a glance back at an age which was not afraid of frank
magnificence, guided by a purer taste than we can boast.
Pintoricchio never shows the ear in his female heads. In the men's it is
large, placed high, with the inner cartilage strongly defined. The hand
has a short metacarpus and long fingers, the thumb well separated, and
the little finger hooked in Fiorenzo's manner. He paints with a full
brush, and has a heavy, liquid touch in fresco, but in working in panel
he shows a beautiful surface quality which oil painting could not
surpass.