THE BORGIA APARTMENTS
There is perhaps hardly a place in Rome where you feel so transported
into the heart of that old life of the Renaissance, as you do in the
Borgia Apartments. After mid-day it is almost empty of sightseers; and
in the long rooms, where the silence is only broken by the splash of the
fountain in the quiet, grassy court outside, you realise the setting of
the passionate lives that once ran their course here. Here the light
caught Lucrezia's golden hair, here the famous pontiff rustled in his
brocaded robes, and Cæsar Borgia strode in gilded armour. Here great
ambitions were matured, and blackest crimes consummated; and here, too,
came and went the little, deaf, beauty-loving painter from the Umbrian
hills, and drew his cartoons, and spaced his decorations, and overlooked
his army of workmen, and left us as splendid a scheme of rich ornament
as the quattro-cento has to show.
The preservation of these rooms is due to their having been for so long
shut up. Pope Julius, moved partly by reprobation of the crimes of his
predecessor, partly by hatred of the whole house of Borgia, refused to
live in the apartments; but at the end of the sixteenth century the
nephews of Leo XI. used them for a time. For two centuries they seem to
have been uninhabited, and the Abbé Taja in 1750 laments this
abandonment, and deplores their loss to all lovers of the fine arts.
Later, in the eighteenth century, we learn from Chattard[23] that they
were used for the meals of cardinals and officials who assembled during
Holy Week. In 1816, when, in consequence of the peace of Tolentino, the
precious collection of pictures was sent back from Paris, some of them
were collected in the Borgia apartments, and the marble cross-bars of
the windows were replaced by iron ones to give more light. The light
was, however, so bad that the pictures were removed, and a miscellaneous
museum and library took their place.
[23] _Nuova descrizione del Vaticano_, ii. 58.
In 1891 the present Pope, Leo XIII., moved the library, and the delicate
task of restoration began. The book-shelves and marbles had cracked and
destroyed the plaster in places, and in the time of Pius VII. some
varnish had been applied to the ceilings, making a sort of crust. The
restoration has been carried out with the greatest care under the
direction of Signor Lodovico Seitz, and has fortunately been restricted
to repairing the plaster and stucco, and to cleaning the frescoes from
dust and damp. Though in some parts of the fifth and sixth halls the
stucco has been taken off, the walls reconstructed, and the surface
refixed, it has been done with such nicety that no mark is perceptible,
and retouching, with one or two trifling exceptions, has been absolutely
tabooed. What repainting there is dates from the time of Pius VII., but
is fortunately slight. This applies to the actual paintings.
Most of the decorations of the lower walls have been repainted,
following the fragmentary traces that remained, or, where these were
quite obliterated, they have been replaced with harmonious hangings. The
minor decorations of the halls are a study in themselves, and are the
more interesting as it is evident that the artist has superintended the
whole, subordinating the marble work, the painting of the lower panels,
and even the tiled floor to suit his scheme of colour.
It is extraordinary that no contract for these rooms has been
discovered. No sign of the agreement for them remains in Alexander
Borgia's account book. It is only from incidental mention in letters to
and from Orvieto, and from payments made, that we can find out when the
work was begun, and how long it lasted.
Messrs. Ehrle and Stevenson, in their monumental work on the Borgia
Apartments, show very clearly that Pintoricchio's part only began with
the second room. The private or living rooms of the Pope at that time
were the second, or the Hall of Mysteries; the third, the Hall of
Saints; and the fourth, or Arts and Sciences, besides the two
withdrawing rooms. Vasari knew this quite well at the end of the
sixteenth century. It is only with Chattard, about 1764, that the whole
of the six rooms were said to have been decorated for Alexander VIII. In
Vasari's life of Pintoricchio, he says the Pope made him paint the rooms
he inhabited, and the Borgia Tower; and, more clearly still, in the life
of Perino del Vaga, he says the latter was painting the vault of the
Sala Pontifici, by which you enter the rooms of Pope Alexander,
_already painted by Pintoricchio_. Taking off this room, there remain
five, to which he assigned three years.
Our knowledge of contracts of the time enable us to construct pretty
accurately what must have been the conditions of the missing agreement.
The master would have been required to use the best colours, to begin
and end within certain time limits, to design all the cartoons, and to
paint the faces and principal parts with his own hand. We can gather
from the existing work that Pintoricchio performed his share of such a
contract honestly; assistants were evidently and inevitably employed,
but the homogeneous character of the whole is remarkable, and proves,
not only that the painter's supervision must have been incessant, but
also that he had the power of directing and overseeing his pupils' work,
so as to keep their individuality in sufficient abeyance to his own
guiding influence. That he had by this time his own workshop of helpers
and skilled painters working under him we do not doubt, but I do not
think that any critics who have studied the consistent character of the
work, now doubt that he had the supreme direction, and that he was
undisturbed by rivals. The unity of ornament, too, leads us to believe
that he directed and designed all this part himself. Probably the marble
work is by Andrea Bregno, who had been working with him in the Sixtine
Chapel, and Santa Maria del Popolo.
Something of the beauty which greets us in these halls we owe to the
mellowing hand of time; yet even when new, the effect must have been
rich and glowing, brilliant and deep rather than gaudy, and all is
planned to suit the subdued light of a northern aspect. The square, not
very high rooms are spaced, divided, and slightly vaulted with the most
consummate skill. The rich soft colours, the heavy gold, the airy
outlook of landscape, the glowing background, give an effect, choice,
jewelled, of an exquisite finish, of a sensuous gratification, almost
without parallel. The imagination furnishes the empty chambers with all
the choice objects they once contained. The priceless majolica, the gold
and silver vessels, the brocaded hangings, the ivory carvings--what a
background for the scenes of love and revelry once enacted here! The
thrum of music, the laughter and wit and boisterous merriment, the
muttered conferences, the whispered plotting, the ghastly treacheries,
the dying groans. In one of these rooms, the Hall of Arts, the first
husband of the young Lucrezia was murdered. In the adjoining room the
Pope himself died in agonies. On these and on what other deeds of
darkness and despair and triumphant villainy have these chaste and
innocent conceptions of Pintoricchio looked down. It gives them a
curious attraction, born of incongruity; as a writer says: "They have
all the fascination of 'fleurs du mal.'"
It was about this time that the grotesque first crept into art. Dr.
Schmarsow thinks that the earliest signs may be detected in the Borgia
Apartments. The early art of the Renaissance had shown a preference for
the classic, inspired by the decorations on antique marbles. The objects
were clear and simple, human beings, animals, keeping true to nature,
ornamented with garlands, ribbons, and other accessories, fanciful, but
not fantastic. The origin of the expression "grottesque," which is first
used in Pintoricchio's contract in Siena in 1502, is explained by
Benvenuto Cellini in 1571. It was taken from the objects found by
students of art who explored antique monuments in caverns or grottoes.
Paintings, ornamented with grotesques, were crowded with objects all
complicated, twisted and adapted, masks, swans with abnormally long
necks, fabulous monsters, unnatural flowers. Exuberantly as Pintoricchio
afterwards uses such objects, the tendency is only seen slightly here
and in the Buffalini chapel. His work in the first hall (the Hall of
Mysteries) of the life of our Lord, has something of a mediæval
tendency. The scenes are seven in number: "The Annunciation," "The
Nativity," "The Adoration of the Magi," "The Resurrection," "The
Ascension," "The Descent of the Holy Spirit," and "The Assumption of the
Virgin." The composition of all is of the simplest, no strong emotions
are rendered, and the figures are all of that peaceful and primitive
devotion suited to the ruling of the early Church, and recalling
Fiorenzo and Bonfigli. Indeed, the contrast is great between the
simplicity of ornament and more ambitious, scientific spirit in the
Sixtine, and the return here to the conventional composition and the
mediæval fondness for accessory. Both "The Annunciation" and "The
Adoration of the Magi" are of the Umbro-Perugian type. Pintoricchio
repeats the angel of the first scene again at Spello, with several other
figures. In the radial lines of the pavement we recognise the example of
Perugino in the Sixtine fresco. The whole scene in the stately halls
opening out in a beautiful landscape, is full of soft dignity. The
rose-pink of the angels' robes, the peacock-blues and greens of Mary's
garments, the rose-wreath, the lilies, make a luscious combination of
colour. It is the impassionate character, the childlike and unconscious
spirit of all Pintoricchio's creations that gives them such a piquancy,
in contrast to their splendid setting.
[Illustration:
_Anderson photo_] [_Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome_
THE ANNUNCIATION]
Dr. Auguste Schmarsow, of all the critics, is the one who has given most
careful study to these frescoes and has brought most knowledge and
erudition to bear upon them. He divides a great deal of the execution
among the various schools to which he thinks Pintoricchio's assistants
belonged, and his assignments, if not to be taken as actual facts, are
worth considering--it being allowed that the whole is due to one
designer. All critics concur in giving the figures in the "Annunciation"
to the master. In the next, the "Nativity," the Virgin and Child are
also from Pintoricchio's own hand, and many details recall the
altar-piece in Santa Maria del Popolo. The "Adoration of the Magi" is
attributed to a Lombard, except the boy at the right, who is by a pupil
of Botticelli. We should be sorry to hold Pintoricchio immediately
responsible for the ill-drawn Child and awkward hands in this fresco;
and in the patterns on the dresses and the terra-cotta mouldings of the
buildings we see the Lombard taste. In the "Resurrection" we have the
broken tomb, the risen Saviour, and the guards in armour, set in a
landscape of rocky ground and cypresses.
The principal figure, upon a gilded glory, set round with cherubs' heads
and tongues of flame and grasping a banner, is far too ill-drawn for the
master, and Schmarsow gives it entirely to a Lombard. The guards are
all of a refined Umbrian type, full of spirit and intelligence, and Dr.
Steinmann suggests that we may have here portraits of Cæsar Borgia and
his brother, who at the time would be boys of seventeen and eighteen. It
is, as he argues, difficult to say what other portraits (and that they
are portraits is evident) would be allowed in the same scene with that
of the donor, Pope Alexander himself, who kneels on the left hand, the
most conspicuous figure of the whole group, clothed in a gorgeous
mantle, embossed with gold, his hands raised in prayer. His face has a
strong beaked nose, low forehead, heavy jowl, double chin and crafty
eye, and the tonsure shows the unusual development of the back of the
skull. It is a splendidly realistic portrait, full of strength and
truth, and clever modelling of the heavy fleshy face. This is entirely
by Pintoricchio, who naturally would not leave such an important detail
to any inferior hand. It is in unconscious satire that the Pope raises
his clasped hands and eyes to the figure of the risen Lord, and that the
inscription is to be read--like a sentence from the Judgment Seat--"I
wait for my resurrection." These figures, in contrast to some of the
puppet-like ones in the two preceding frescoes, are full of life, vivid
and solid. In "The Ascension," painted on the archway over the window,
the figure of Christ is the same in attitude if not in drapery. The
whole is feebly drawn, and the gestures of the Apostles show a great
want of unity. In this composition Schmarsow sees an imitation of
Melozzo da Forli, while the heads and drapery are of the school of the
Sienese, Bernardino Fungai, and by the same hand as the prophets on the
roof nearest the window.
[Illustration:
_Anderson photo_] [_Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome_
POPE ALEXANDER VI. ADORING THE RISEN CHRIST]
The "Descent of the Holy Spirit" has suffered more than any of the
frescoes from damp and restoration. The scene is placed in an open
field--an arbitrary action of the painter intended to give unity to the
background by making it a landscape like the other spaces, in
Pintoricchio's special manner. The usual harmony of design is lacking
here, and the lower part of the scene is out of harmony with the upper.
We trace the Lombard style again, particularly on the left hand, while
some figures on the right recall the Sienese. The two inner figures of
prophets on the vault are in the style of Fiorenzo. It is not likely
that Pintoricchio would himself have worked at these, but Perugian
pupils were certainly working with him.
In the remaining fresco of the "Assumption," the composition is entirely
Umbrian, and may be compared with that in Santa Maria del Popolo, and in
the Vatican. In St. Thomas, and in the angels on the right, Schmarsow
sees the style of Perugino, but that master was a _protégé_ of Cardinal
Giuliano della Rovere, and at this time was busied on work for his
patron; in any case, he would not have been likely to take service under
his old pupil. Of course, Pintoricchio must have had designs by him in
his possession. The Madonna in some degree recalls the much more
beautiful one Pintoricchio afterwards painted for the monks of Monte
Oliveto. But the figure which gives its artistic importance to the
fresco is that of the man in black who kneels on the right of the open
tomb, facing St. Thomas. This figure alone, in grandeur and simplicity
of attitude, in intensity of expression, in fine drawing and handling,
and in depth of colour, would vindicate Pintoricchio's claim to be
called a great painter--taken in conjunction with the Pope on the
opposite wall, it carries conviction of the power and the insight of the
man who could produce two such diverse and striking types, though the
art that produced them may be empirical rather than scientific. We do
not know who this last may be. There are no signs of his rank in his
dress, no cardinal's hat by his side; but it is evident that he must
have been a person of importance. It is conjectured that he is Francesco
Borgia, the Pope's brother, who, in 1493 became Bishop of Teano, and
Papal treasurer.[24]
[24] E. Steinmann, _Pintoricchio_, p. 54.
A wonderful softness broods over the whole decoration of this room; the
details, elaborate as they are, are subordinated to a quiet and restful
effect. All absence of violent action or emotion contributes to the
impression; the same peaceful types are repeated; the same character of
landscape: all modifies the pictorial to the decorative effect. We may
notice here a feature which Pintoricchio shares very strikingly with
Perugino--it is that feeling for restraint, the instinct to keep all of
small size and well within the picture which gives these painters such a
peculiarly refined character, especially in contrast with those who
followed, copyists of Raphael and Michael Angelo. Everywhere in the
decorative part of the rooms we see the bull's head, the appropriate
device of the savage representative of the House of Borgia, a device
which the House--which was of Spanish extraction--had borne since the
thirteenth century. The decoration is repeated over and over again, and
does not show much resource or ingenuity, but the subdued tone of the
whole is very happy and thoroughly appropriate.
[Illustration:
_Anderson photo_] [_Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome_
FIGURE OF THE POPE
(A detail from "Pope Alexander VI. adoring the Risen Christ")]
A marble doorway surrounded by two _putti_ bearing a shield, leads to
the Hall of Saints. Here Pintoricchio has surpassed himself in beauty.
Here is more varied and more lively action and better effects of
grouping than we find anywhere in his work, except in the Sixtine
Chapel. When these apartments were little known, the Libreria at Siena
was often quoted as the achievement on which the Umbrian master's fame
rested, but to know him at his best we must see him here in Rome. For
technique, colour, decoration, and poetical feeling, these rooms, and
especially the Hall of Saints, rank higher than anything else he has
left, with the exception, perhaps, of the Buffalini and Sixtine Chapels.
The legends of the saints are varied by a scene from the Old and one
from the New Testament. It does not appear what was the reason of this
conjunction.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_] [_Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome_
THE KNEELING MAN
(A detail from the "Assumption of the Virgin")]
Over the door we have "Susanna and the Elders." The middle of the
composition is occupied by a splendid fountain in the style of the
Renaissance. The top part, with the child holding the dolphin, resembles
Verrocchio's work in the courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.
The fountain is placed in a little garden plot set round with palings
and a rose hedge, and the fanciful hand which painted it has filled
it with animals: a hare, a stag lying down by the shoes which Susanna
has just slipped off, a fawn, white rabbits gambolling in all
directions, a monkey attached to a golden chain. These are evidently
painted by a real student-lover of animals. In front of the fountain
stands the saint, in a clinging white robe that reminds us of the
sculpture of Agostino di Duccio; her feet are bare; a heavy necklace and
pendant are round her throat. The two elders, in rich robes and Eastern
turbans, grasp her arms on either side; but her attitude, with her hand
on the shoulder of one, is free from violent emotion, calm and trustful.
Pintoricchio has seldom painted a more exquisite and poetical figure
than this, with fair head and delicately-modelled arms and hands. Its
purity and innocence, and the subject of the legend, make it a strange
choice for the private apartments of a Borgia.
[Illustration:
_Anderson photo_] [_Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome_
THE STORY OF SUSANNA]
In the background on the left, the same white figure is being hurried to
execution by guards in the dress of the fifteenth century, while Daniel,
mounted on a white horse and holding a sceptre, intervenes in her
favour. On the other side, the elders, bound to a tree, are stoned to
death, even a little figure of a child casting stones at them. These
figures show a great deal of animated action and good drawing and
modelling, and are full of life and spirit. Behind is a landscape in the
well-known style of Pintoricchio--the whole strongly recalling the work
of Fiorenzo. Bernardino here is in his most idyllic and fairy-tale vein,
and nowhere is the painting more finished; but the very great care of
detail, carried into the most distant part, gives too great an
importance to accessories, and damages the unity of the whole, showing
him less as a great composer than a decorator.
In the next fresco, Santa Barbara escapes from the tower in which she
had been imprisoned by her cruel father, and in which she had built
three windows in honour of the Trinity. On the left of the tower we see
the great rent made by a miracle, through which she escaped. The father,
armed with a scimitar, and shielding his eyes with his hand, is
anxiously searching for her in the wrong direction. He is accompanied by
two armed followers, one of whom catches sight of her, and, suddenly
converted, looks longingly after her. In the background the saint
escapes in company with Santa Giulia, and on the right her father is
asking for news from a shepherd, who, for betraying that he has seen
her, is turned into a marble pillar and painted white to convey this
idea. Santa Barbara herself is a naïve and charming figure, gracefully
posed, with flying draperies and long fair hair circled with pearls. Her
streaming locks and blowing draperies give the impression of flight and
movement very successfully. The whole effect is gay and fanciful. The
saint, her little fair face turned up, her hands clasped, might be a
fairy princess, escaping from an enchanted castle, over a sward carpeted
with blossoms. She makes a bright figure in effective contrast to the
white-robed Susanna.
The lunette opposite this is one of the happiest of the series--"The
Visit of St. Anthony to Paul the Hermit." Beneath a rough natural stone
archway in which the hermitage is concealed, its presence indicated by
the bell which the hermit uses to call himself to prayers, the two
saints sit, sharing the loaf of bread which has been brought by the
faithful raven, which flies away on the left. Close to St. Paul two
disciples in white robes contemplate the edifying conversation, behind
St. Anthony are grouped three women, richly dressed. They advance with
half-closed, wanton eyes, and by the little horns on their fashionably
dressed hair, their bats' wings, and the claws peeping out from under
their flowing skirts, their demoniacal character is betrayed. The last
of the group, with head thrown back and hands resting on either side of
her waist, is a very original and beautiful figure. The face and hands
of St. Anthony are strongly drawn and the robes finely draped. In the
hermit, dressed in the legendary garment of palm leaves, and in the very
inferior figures of disciples, the hand of an assistant may be seen. The
latter recall Signorelli, without his force and freshness.
[Illustration:
_Anderson photo_] [_Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome_
ST. ANTHONY AND ST. PAUL--HERMITS]
In "The Visitation," which fills the remaining space on this side, we
have one of those sweet, home-like narrative paintings so dear to
Umbrian art. The Virgin and St. Elizabeth, dressed in the long
conventional blue and green draperies, clasp hands in the foreground,
the Virgin with downcast eyes, the saint with the searching gaze
prescribed by tradition. Behind them, St. Joseph leans on a staff, and a
procession of children and pages follows: a girl with graceful swathings
of scarf and sleeve carries a basket of fruit upon her head, and with a
child at her feet, is distantly reminiscent of certain figures by
Botticelli in the Sixtine Chapel. The smiling landscape, across which
the visitors have journeyed, is seen through a perspective of
elaborately drawn and decorated arches, on which some of those drawings
of grotesque ornamentation can be discerned. On the right, in the
shadows of the arcades, is a delightful group, one of those bits with
which Pintoricchio gives interest and charm to his compositions.
Zacharias, who is as yet unaware of the arrival, leans in an angle,
absorbed in a book. On the ground a group of women, young and old, are
occupied in spinning and embroidery; at the back another graceful figure
twirls a distaff, and a child plays with a dog on the ground in front.
In some of the secondary parts of the execution of this, Schmarsow sees
the hand of Pintoricchio's best scholar. The architecture has nothing of
the Umbrian style, but shows the hand of one to whom the Lombard
decoration, with its terra-cotta work, is familiar. The whole of the
fresco is more broadly painted, the draperies in large, broad folds, the
value of the landscape better kept, more softly modulated than in any we
have yet noticed.
[Illustration:
_Anderson photo_] [_Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome_
THE DEMON WOMEN
(Detail from the fresco of "St. Anthony and St. Paul")]
The light over the windows is so bad that it is almost impossible to get
an adequate view of the frescoes placed there. This is particularly
unfortunate in the Hall of Saints, for no one of the scenes is more
beautiful, more happily grouped or more full of interest than the one of
St. Sebastian's martyrdom. The young Saint who, transfixed with arrows
and bound with cords, stands at the base of a column placed against a
mass of ruined brickwork on Mount Palatine, is a pathetic figure, full
of calm dignity and resignation. It is drawn and modelled with care
and freedom, and has a force and solidity which make us regret that
Pintoricchio did not give himself more chance by oftener painting
studies from the nude. The figure and drapery with some modifications
seem to have been adapted from his fresco of the "Baptism of Christ,"
but he has learnt more since then, and it stands firmer and gives a
greater sense of elasticity and poise. The groups of archers on either
hand, shooting at their human mark, under the superintendence of a
Janissary in Eastern dress,[25] are full of movement and variety. One
draws his bow, another is putting the arrow in the string, another has
just let fly, while behind him a fourth in half armour shades his eyes
with his hand and watches the weapon speed to the mark--a quaint,
matter-of-fact rendering of a scene of tragedy, which deprives it of its
serious character and gives it, as Steinmann remarks, a social air, as
of a friendly shooting match.
[25] In the British Museum is a drawing for this figure, attributed
to Gentile Bellini, about which I shall have more to say.
The scene in which the event takes place is more interestingly painted
in some ways than any of the other landscapes. It is easy to see that
studies for it have been made upon the Palatine itself, where tradition
has always held that Sebastian, who was a captain of the Roman Guard,
met his martyrdom. The small old Roman brickwork, overgrown with
exquisitely drawn acanthus and ivy, is rendered with detailed care, and
broken columns stand or lie around. In the background we see the
half-ruined Colosseum, as Sixtus IV. left it when he built the Sixtine
Bridge from its blocks. On the right is a church--it may be San Giovanni
e Paolo, or the one raised in honour of the saint himself. Nowhere up to
this time has the beauty and the melancholy of the Roman landscape been
rendered by any artist, and once more we feel how deeply beauty in all
its forms appealed to the Umbrian painter.
[Illustration:
_Anderson photo_] [_Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome_
THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. SEBASTIAN]
We now turn to the principal wall, facing the window, the most splendid
of all the frescoes which Pintoricchio has left. At the foot of the
great arch of Constantine, which is crowned with a golden bull, St.
Catherine of Alexandria holds a theological dispute with fifty
philosophers at a council convoked by the Emperor Maximian. The only
woman in the great assemblage, the fair little figure stands before the
throne of the Emperor and illustrates the points of her arguments upon
her fingers. The same model has served here as for Santa
Barbara--tradition says it was Lucrezia herself, the dearly-loved
daughter of the Pope--with the small delicate features and long fair
hair, which she is described by Burckhardt as possessing. The scene is
laid in the usual sunny landscape. Old men with high caps and turbans
dispute together, potentates ride upon the scene, pages attend their
masters, bearing their volumes for reference, a greyhound steals forward
at the feet of a squire who bears a halberd on his shoulder. Some are
hastily searching their books as if short of arguments, but the king's
daughter is speaking on without hesitation, as if inspired by an
unerring director. Lucrezia was fifteen the year this was painted, and
was given in marriage to Giovanni Sforza. Full of wit and charm as
she was, the painter may have caught the idea of his composition from
seeing her foremost in lively discussion among the nobles of her
father's court, but the figure and gesture is practically copied from
Masolino's of the same subject in San Clemente. All the evil Lucrezia
witnessed, all the black deeds she took part in, if history says truly,
seem to have swept over that fair head, and when she settled down at
Pesaro with her third husband, we gather that she was glad to leave
intrigue and crime behind and to lead a comparatively peaceable,
respectable existence for the rest of her life.
[Illustration:
_Anderson photo_] [_Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome_
THE DISPUTE OF ST. CATHERINE]
The idea of the splendour of the Pope's court has fascinated the
painter, and round the beautiful girl, who was its centre, he has
grouped other remarkable personages who must have struck him there. The
sad-eyed, bitter-looking man in Greek dress, who stands on the left in
the foreground, is said to be Andrea Paleologos, commonly called the
Despot of Morea, nephew and heir of the unfortunate Emperor Constantine,
under whose rule Constantinople fell into the hands of the Turks. Andrea
had with his father, taken refuge at the Papal court some twenty years
earlier; they had brought with them a precious gift--the bones of St.
Andrew--and the hospitality of successive Popes had been extended to
them. Andrea could never forget his former grandeur or reconcile himself
to his position, though, as he made profit out of his hereditary rights
in many petty ways, he was held in little repute. Certainly the
resentful, brooding expression, the isolated air, accords well with the
descriptions of the disappointed, disinherited man, standing silent and
moody while the gay court of the Renaissance is unheeding of him. This
interesting attribution is now questioned by some authorities.
[Illustration:
_Anderson photo_] [_Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome_
ST. CATHERINE
(A detail from the "Dispute of St. Catherine")]
In the British Museum are drawings of a Turk and a Turkish woman, both
seated cross-legged. The drawing of the man serves for the Janissary in
the "Martyrdom of St. Sebastian," reversed, and the arm slightly
altered.
At Frankfort is a drawing of an Albanian, and also the one from which
the alleged portrait of the Despot of Morea is taken.
In the Louvre are two drawings of Turks and one of a Turkish woman. Here
we find the Turk standing on the Emperor's left hand, and supposed to be
the Sultan Djem.
All these drawings appear to be by the same hand and done at the same
time--alike in size and style. The two in the British Museum have been
ascribed to Gentile Bellini, and are believed to have been sketches made
by him in Constantinople. They have all the appearance of being from
life. There are touches of reality in the under-robe of the Turk, the
wrinkles in his face and the muscles of the neck, which entirely
disappear when the sketch is transferred to the plaster wall. The
question then arises, Did Pintoricchio transfer drawings by Bellini
straight into his fresco, or can we entertain the opinion advanced by
Signor A. Venturi, that the drawings are not by Bellini at all, but by
Pintoricchio himself?[26]
[26] _L'Arte_, vol. i. p. 32.
The Sultan Djem no doubt had a suite which included women, and
Pintoricchio would have had no difficulty in finding models. We can
hardly doubt, apart from tradition, that the painter _did_ intend the
very prominent Greek in his fresco to represent Paleologos, who would so
obviously balance the other distinguished refugee at the opposite
corner; but if so, why copy an old drawing of thirteen years earlier,
when it was essential to secure a portrait, and when Paleologos himself
was always about the court? The same remark holds good of the drawing of
the Turks. With so many Turks in Rome in 1493, and all the town wild
about them, is it probable that Pintoricchio should have had recourse
for them to old drawings by Bellini? On the other hand, the style of the
drawings has no resemblance whatever to that of Pintoricchio, though I
cannot see much more to Gentile Bellini. I am inclined to think that the
attribution to this last is an arbitrary one, and arises from his having
been known to have visited the East, but that the drawings were supplied
to Pintoricchio by a third person unknown, probably one of his
assistants, whom he commissioned to procure sketches.
[Illustration:
_Anderson photo_] [_Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome_
GROUP OF HEADS
(A detail from the "Dispute of St. Catherine")]
The figure on the Emperor's left, in Turkish dress, has usually been
taken for Prince Djem, the younger son of the Sultan Mahommed II., but
as it is on record that Djem closely resembled his father, and as we
have an excellent likeness of the latter in Gentile Bellini's famous
portrait (now in Lady Layard's possession), we are able to identify Djem
in the much more striking personage, the fierce and stately prince on
horseback on the extreme right. It was as a hostage that Innocent VIII.
brought him to Rome in 1489. We have plenty of evidence of how "el Gran
Turco" struck the fancy of the Romans. All the Chronicles of the time,
the letters and diaries of Ambassadors, are full of descriptions of his
dress and person, and of the gay hunting parties which the Pope used to
give in his honour. Mantegna has left a graphic description of his
appearance in a letter written from Rome in 1485, in which he speaks of
his fierce aspect, his wonderful seat on a horse, and his turban made of
"thirty thousand ells of fine linen."
We can guess that the Turks made a great impression on Pintoricchio, for
he brings them in again to his frescoes fifteen years later at Siena.
The Emperor has been said to be a portrait of Cæsar Borgia; but as he
was only eighteen or nineteen at the time, this seems impossible. The
young man on horseback on the right, tradition names as Giovanni Sforza,
who was about twenty.
Here, too, is another portrait, less splendid but as notable as any. In
the corner on our left may be seen the slim form and thin dark face,
sensitive and observant, of the little painter himself, and by his side
a man with a shrewd, firm face, with a grand gold chain round his
shoulders and holding an architect's square in his hand. This is no
doubt one of the sculptors or decorators of the rooms. It may be
Bramante, or the elder San Gallo, or Andrea Bregno, that conjuror in
marble.
The ceiling in this room is a marvel of richly-gilt and embossed stucco,
mingled with painting. The eight large triangular spaces between the
bars of framework illustrate the myth of Osiris and Isis which, with its
history of the deification of the bull, appropriately symbolises the
exaltation of the House of Borgia. The young King Osiris, having
conquered Egypt, ploughs the land with bulls and teaches the Egyptian to
plant orchards and vineyards. The peace and prosperity of his rule is
crowned by his marriage with Isis. Warriors pile their useless armour
and children play around their knees. In this segment one particularly
delightful _putto_ is riding astride of a swan, the original for which,
in marble, had been among the recent discoveries of antiques. As the
history proceeds, the wicked brother raises the Egyptians in mutiny and
Isis finds the remains of her murdered husband. Isis is a graceful
fantastic figure, with swathing draperies, and the cut-up hands and legs
of the unfortunate Osiris are disposed about the ground with a very
naïve effect. Then we have his burial, wrapped in cloth of gold--the
pyramid erected to him, and his apparition deified in the form of the
famous bull Apis, ending with a procession and the bull borne in
triumph. The intervals are lavishly filled in with grotesques, which are
here very marked in character. It is curious to note Pintoricchio's
study of the antique, the classic armour, and the mythical histories in
the small _tondi_ on the wide cross architrave--Mercury soothing Argus
to sleep, and then slaying him at Jove's command. Jove seizing Io, and
obtaining possession of the cow into which her friend was transformed.
The design of the principal subjects is in Pintoricchio's style and full
of fancy and invention, but the execution would seem to have been
entrusted to assistants, apparently to the same hand which worked on the
archers round St. Sebastian and in parts of the Susanna.