LIFE IN ROME--CONTINUED
Giuliano della Rovere, though his uncle was dead, was still a powerful
cardinal when Innocent VIII. succeeded in 1484. He inhabited the Colonna
Palace, where Vasari tells us that both Perugino and Pintoricchio worked
in his service. Nearly all the Umbrian decorations were swept away later
to make room for the work of Poussin and Zuccaro, but the ceiling of one
great hall still boasts the design of Pintoricchio. It is a rich and
splendid piece of work. Ornaments in chiaroscuro on a blue or gold
groundwork frame four little medallions of classic fable or sacred
story--"Mucius Scævola" and "Virginia," the "History of Judith" and of
"David." Hoary river-gods, grasping sheaves of corn and overflowing
cornucopias of fruit, recline on the backs of sphinxes, on either side
of fountains. More fanciful still are monkeys swinging from ribbons,
centaurs prancing, _putti_ riding goats which are led by older boys,
fauns waving banners, owls, garlands and serpents, all set in a rich
plastered and painted framework, finished with gold rosettes.
Service in the private palace of the cardinal led on to employment by
Pope Innocent, to whom, no doubt, Giuliano recommended Pintoricchio for
this class of work, for in 1486 he was at work in the Belvedere. It was
here that he painted the towns of which Taja speaks. "Not long after,"
says Vasari, "about the year 1484, Innocent VIII., a Genoese, made him
paint several halls and _loggie_ in the Palace of the Belvedere, where,
among other things which the Pope wished for, he painted a _loggia_ all
with towns, and you could discern Rome, Milan, Genoa, Florence, Venice
and Naples, all in the Flemish manner, which, being no longer much in
use, pleased very well."[22] No trace of them remains, nor is anything
left of the great Madonna picture which Vasari says was painted over the
principal entrance. The only remains of Umbrian art are to be found on
the walls and ceiling of what is to-day called the Museo Pio Clementino.
A graceful _loggia_ was half obliterated here to give more room to the
sculpture gallery, but above, the arms of Innocent VIII. and the date
1487 are still visible, surrounded by garlands and ornaments resembling
those in the Colonna Palace. Little medallions of classic subjects still
struggle dimly through decay and ochre wash. In the archways, seven
couples of _putti_ hold the papal shield, or play on musical
instruments, and we can trace the proud device of the Cibo, the gleaming
peacock and the motto "Loyauté passe tout."
[22] Vasari, iii. p. 498.
In the two little rooms adjoining are prophets and philosophers, and
here may be recognised the somewhat archaic assistant who helped
Pintoricchio in the Borgia Tower. Only these poor scraps remain of the
year's service with the Cibo Pope, and hardly more of what he
accomplished for his cardinals. Domenico della Rovere, the cardinal of
San Clemente, was one of Pintoricchio's earliest patrons in Rome. He
does indeed seem to have been as much friend as patron, and took both
Perugino and Pintoricchio to lodge with him upon their first arrival in
his spacious palace in the Piazza Scossacavalli, outside the entrance of
which Pintoricchio painted a scutcheon supported by _putti_. The
decoration of the interior of the palace then called Sant' Apostoli was
also entrusted to him. To-day it is inhabited by eleven brothers of the
order of the Penitenzieri. It retains something of the fascination of a
princely dwelling of the fourteenth century. In the mouldy courtyard are
traces of almost obliterated paintings. Under the roof are heraldic
devices, armorial bearings, sphinxes and dolphins. In the courtyard,
orange trees grow round a well, which may have been the work of
Bramante. Ivy half covers walls which were once gay with frescoes, but
among the ruin and decay we see repeated countless times in the marble
window frames, the name of the builder--DO. ROVERE, CAR. S. CLEMEN. and
his pious device--SOLI DEO. Outside are faint traces of the shield of
Sixtus IV. supported by two _putti_, the only part of the work which
Vasari deigns to notice.
Inside, the three great halls on the ground floor, though partly
whitewashed and even built up, keep some remains of past splendour. On a
beam can still be read the date at which the palace was finished, 1490.
There is still a good deal of the original gilding left on the wooden
ceilings, and where the whitewash has been scraped away, shadowy heads
of apostles are to be seen, and fine and delicate Renaissance ornament.
The whole resembles the designs for the Colonna Palace, and what can
still be made out appears to be by the master himself, elegant and
decisive in touch. All sorts of animals are made use of--a winged stag
drinks from a cornucopia, sea-gods and mermaids are instructing nymphs
to ride on dolphins, a sphinx plays with a dragon, satyrs are placed in
a vintage scene, sirens beguile centaurs with music--all in the fancy of
the Revival, exuberant, yet full of dainty grace. Bits of marble work
strike the eye here and there--the heraldic bearing of Rovere, the eagle
of Alidori; but there is little left to tell us of the glory of the
princely house, of the great churchman who built it, or of the Umbrian
master he employed to decorate it.
The exultant motto which he placed on a marble tablet to celebrate its
completion, looks down from the decaying wall and speaks to us in words
half sad, half mocking: "This house shall stand till the ant has drunk
up the sea, and till the tortoise has crept round the world."
This plan of small landscapes and scenes set in a wide framework of
fantastic objects, classic and mythological, musical instruments,
garlands and ribbons, becoming more and more grotesque, was peculiar at
this time to Pintoricchio. He may have taken the idea from walls in old
Roman houses, since destroyed, but of which many were uncovered at this
period. The same sort of decoration is to be seen to-day in the Roman
rooms on the Palatine. Pintoricchio uses this mode of decoration again
in the Borgia Apartments, and from him Raphael borrowed the idea for his
_loggie_.
The beautiful church of Santa Maria del Popolo, restored by Pope Sixtus
in 1472, and subsequently rendered a very storehouse of art by his
successors and their cardinal kinsmen, would be, if it had been left
with all its original decorations, one of the finest monuments to
Pintoricchio's art in Italy. A great deal still remains, but much has
been swept away. We cannot be quite certain of the exact date of each
chapel, but his work here, with the exception of the choir, was carried
out during the next few years.
The church was a favourite one with the Rovere family. Pope Sixtus
himself often went to vespers there. In 1480 he instituted his nephew,
Girolamo Riario, as chief warden. Here he came in state to give thanks
after the victory of Campo Morto had delivered Rome from the fear of the
Calabrian invader. Roderigo Borgia, too, as early as 1473, had given a
marble altar to be placed in front of a miracle-working picture of the
Madonna. Vasari speaks of two chapels painted by Pintoricchio in this
church: one with the history of St. Jerome, for Domenico della Rovere,
as a memorial of his brother, Christoforo, who died in 1479; the other
for Cardinal Innocenzio Cibo. The Umbrian frescoes were destroyed, and
the baroque ornamentation we now see, substituted. There is a third
chapel, dedicated to Santa Catarina, in which the painter executed
half-lengths of the four evangelists in an arched ceiling, for a
Portuguese ecclesiastic, Cardinal Costa.
Finally, a fourth chapel had been the gift of Giovanni Basso della
Rovere, the brother-in-law of Pope Sixtus, whose portrait was already
painted by Pintoricchio in the fresco of the Baptism in the Sixtine
Chapel. Two of the half-lengths of the evangelists--"St. Jerome and Pope
Gregory"--though both spoilt and repainted, remain as Pintoricchio's
work, together with two children supporting a scutcheon. In the chapel
of St. Augustine, the three sons of Giovanni raised a monument to their
father, and some years after his death (to judge by the introduction of
grotesques) it was painted in frescoes, which guide-books still assign
to Pintoricchio. They are in his manner, and were probably executed
while he was working at the choir in 1505, for the papal shield of
Julius II., who succeeded in 1503, appears on the ceiling. The "Pietà"
in the lunette above the monument may possibly have been painted earlier
than the rest of the chapel, and Schmarsow sees in it the hand of
Pintoricchio, influenced by Melozzo da Forli. It is difficult to think
that he can be answerable for it when we compare it with the "Pietà"
over the polyptych at Perugia. The coarse, heavy body of the Christ, the
badly-draped loin cloth, the clumsy attitude of the expressionless
angels, seem rather to be the work of some pupil from North Italy, with
a mingling of the Teutonic, and have nothing in common with the delicate
and devotional Umbrian rendering, so evidently inspired by Perugino.
In the "Assumption," which fills the opposite wall, the figures are too
ill drawn to allow us to think they can be Pintoricchio's. The arms are
too short, the feet out of drawing, the figure of the Madonna is
unnaturally long, with sloping shoulders. Crowe and Cavalcaselle were
the first to suggest as its author Matteo Balducci, a painter who has
left several panels at Siena, which were for long assigned to
Pintoricchio, under whom he worked in Rome. The "Virgin and Child, with
Saints" over the altar is a very inferior work, entirely repainted.
Round the top of the wall runs a series of scenes from the life of the
Virgin. These have been attributed to the North Italian, Morto da
Feltre. They are certainly not by Pintoricchio.
There remains, then, only the little chapel of St. Jerome, which, in
spite of some restoration and some destruction, we can attribute to the
master. It has the freshness of early work, and both in colouring and
style is akin to that of San Bernardino in Ara Cœli, while the
influence of Fiorenzo has re-asserted itself. Over the altar is the
"Nativity," which bears so close a resemblance to the older master's
"Adoration" at Perugia. In the finished sketch at Venice, for the tender
figure of the Madonna, the drapery has the stair-like gradations of
folds on both sides, which Morelli points out as characteristic of him,
and the same critic draws attention to the type of hand, with long, bony
fingers, that we find in his later Madonna dei Fossi. The landscape,
which is soft and deep in tone, resembles that of the frescoes in the
Sixtine Chapel. In two, at least, of the little series of the life of
St. Jerome, we recognise Pintoricchio's own hand. In one, the doctors of
the Church come to visit the saint after he has retired to the desert.
The study for the lion in this scene is in his sketch-book. On the other
side of the chapel is the exquisite little panel in which St. Jerome
argues a point of doctrine with an infidel. This is a bit of
genre-painting with all the charm the Umbrian painters understood so
well. The red-robed saint sits in his great arm-chair; opposite him is
placed a stately doctor in blue. Disciples are grouped on either hand,
some have turbaned heads to suggest their unbelieving origin. Behind
stand favourite dogs, and St. Jerome's faithful lion. The scene is lit
up by the painting of a little window in the centre, through which the
company looks out on a sunny landscape, with trees and a lake lying in
mellow light and floating evening shades. A rich cloth hangs across the
broad sill. The idea of the little outlook, throwing air and contrast
into the interior, is one often afterwards elaborated by Pintoricchio,
and apparently was suggested to him by a panel in Fiorenzo's miracles of
San Bernardino.
In the Capitol is a fresco painting which Mr. Berenson ascribes to our
master. Vasari speaks of his having painted such an altar-piece, but
this, if the same, was entirely repainted in 1834. The colour of the
angels' robes was changed--one from red to yellow, the other from yellow
to white. The Virgin's robe, now blue, was originally green. The face is
painted out of all recognition. The shape is not oval, the mouth is full
with parted lips, and the hair falls on either side of the face. The
angels, with knees bending outward, are not Pintoricchio's type--only
the Child recalls his Infant in the "Nativity" of Santa Maria del Popolo
and the hands are like his in outline.
In the tribune of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme is a great composition of
the "Finding of the True Cross," which tradition has assigned to him
among others and which has strong traces of Umbrian workmanship. This
is entirely and heavily repainted, and its artistic value is _nil_,
except for the design. We should welcome even such an obscured
reminiscence as this, if it remained to us, of the paintings in Castel
Sant' Angelo. On a blue, starred vault, the Saviour is surrounded by a
_mandorla_ of cherubs. Below, St. Helena stands, holding the cross, with
the donor, Cardinal Carvajal, kneeling at her feet. On either side are
the miracles attending its recovery. On the left, the Emperor Heraclius
rides in triumph, bearing the cross, rescued from infidels, to the city
gates. The groups of women on the extreme left, and some of those
standing behind the Empress-saint, are full of likeness to
Pintoricchio's figures in the "Journey of Moses," and the landscape (the
only part which has not been quite repainted), with its purple tints,
overhanging rocks, and parties of wayfarers, recalls the work of
Fiorenzo. The whole has something of the direct simplicity of
Pintoricchio's narratives, but other figures remind us of
Signorelli--the forms are heavy and lumpy, and it is probably only by a
follower, though one who closely imitated the Umbrian master.