It was early morning, and the rays of the rising sun had scarcely yet
caught the roofs of the city of Perugia, when along the winding road
which led across the plain a man and a boy walked with steady,
purposelike steps towards the town which crowned the hill in front.
The man was poorly dressed in the common rough clothes of an Umbrian
peasant. Hard work and poverty had bent his shoulders and drawn stern
lines upon his face, but there was a dignity about him which marked him
as something above the common working man.
The little boy who trotted barefoot along by the side of his father had
a sweet, serious little face, but he looked tired and hungry, and
scarcely fit for such a long rough walk. They had started from their
home at Castello delle Pieve very early that morning, and the piece of
black bread which had served them for breakfast had been but small.
Away in front stretched that long, white, never-ending road; and the
little dusty feet that pattered so bravely along had to take hurried
runs now and again to keep up with the long strides of the man, while
the wistful eyes, which were fixed on that distant town, seemed to
wonder if they would really ever reach their journey's end.
'Art tired already, Pietro?' asked the father at length, hearing a
panting little sigh at his side. 'Why, we are not yet half-way there!
Thou must step bravely out and be a man, for to-day thou shalt begin to
work for thy living, and no longer live the life of an idle child.'
The boy squared his shoulders, and his eyes shone.
'It is not I who am tired, my father,' he said. 'It is only that my
legs cannot take such good long steps as thine; and walk as we will the
road ever seems to unwind itself further and further in front, like the
magic white thread which has no end.'
The father laughed, and patted the child's head kindly.
'The end will come ere long,' he said. 'See where the mist lies at the
foot of the hill; there we will begin to climb among the olive-trees
and leave the dusty road. I know a quicker way by which we may reach
the city. We will climb over the great stones that mark the track of
the stream, and before the sun grows too hot we will have reached the
city gates.'
It was a great relief to the little hot, tired feet to feel the cool
grass beneath them, and to leave the dusty road. The boy almost forgot
his tiredness as he scrambled from stone to stone, and filled his hands
with the violets which grew thickly on the banks, scenting the morning
air with their sweetness. And when at last they came out once more upon
the great white road before the city gates, there was so much to gaze
upon and wonder at, that there was no room for thoughts of weariness or
hunger.
There stood the herds of great white oxen, patiently waiting to pass
in. Pietro wondered if their huge wide horns would not reach from side
to side of the narrow street within the gates. There the shepherd-boys
played sweet airs upon their pipes as they walked before their flocks,
and led the silly frightened sheep out of the way of passing carts.
Women with bright-coloured handkerchiefs tied over their heads crowded
round, carrying baskets of fruit and vegetables from the country round.
Carts full of scarlet and yellow pumpkins were driven noisily along.
Whips cracked, people shouted and talked as much with their hands as
with their lips, and all were eager to pass through the great Etruscan
gateway, which stood grim and tall against the blue of the summer sky.
Much good service had that gateway seen, and it was as strong as when
it had been first built hundreds of years before, and was still able to
shut out an army of enemies, if Perugia had need to defend herself.
Pietro and his father quickly threaded their way through the crowd, and
passed through the gateway into the steep narrow street beyond. It was
cool and quiet here. The sun was shut out by the tall houses, and the
shadows lay so deep that one might have thought it was the hour of
twilight, but for the peep of bright blue sky which showed between the
overhanging eaves above. Presently they reached the great square
market-place, where all again was sunshine and bustle, with people
shouting and selling their wares, which they spread out on the ground
up to the very steps of the cathedral and all along in front of the
Palazzo Publico. Here the man stopped, and asked one of the passers-by
if he could direct him to the shop of Niccolo the painter.
'Yonder he dwells,' answered the citizen, and pointed to a humble shop
at the corner of the market-place. 'Hast thou brought the child to be a
model?'
Pietro held his head up proudly, and answered quickly for himself.
'I am no longer a child,' he said; 'and I have come to work and not to
sit idle.'
The man laughed and went his way, while father and son hurried on
towards the little shop and entered the door.
The old painter was busy, and they had to wait a while until he could
leave his work and come to see what they might want.
'This is the boy of whom I spoke,' said the father as he pushed Pietro
forward by his shoulder. 'He is not well grown, but he is strong, and
has learnt to endure hardness. I promise thee that he will serve thee
well if thou wilt take him as thy servant.'
The painter smiled down at the little eager face which was waiting so
anxiously for his answer.
'What canst thou do?' he asked the boy.
'Everything,' answered Pietro promptly. 'I can sweep out thy shop and
cook thy dinner. I will learn to grind thy colours and wash thy
brushes, and do a man's work.'
'In faith,' laughed the painter, 'if thou canst do everything, being
yet so young, thou wilt soon be the greatest man in Perugia, and bring
great fame to this fair city. Then will we call thee no longer Pietro
Vanucci, but thou shalt take the city's name, and we will call thee
Perugino.'
The master spoke in jest, but as time went on and he watched the boy at
work, he marvelled at the quickness with which the child learned to
perform his new duties, and began to think the jest might one day turn
to earnest.
From early morning until sundown Pietro was never idle, and when the
rough work was done he would stand and watch the master as he painted,
and listen breathless to the tales which Niccolo loved to tell.
'There is nothing so great in all the world as the art of painting,'
the master would say. 'It is the ladder that leads up to heaven, the
window which lets light into the soul. A painter need never be lonely
or poor. He can create the faces he loves, while all the riches of
light and colour and beauty are always his. If thou hast it in thee to
be a painter, my little Perugino, I can wish thee no greater fortune.'
Then when the day's work was done and the short spell of twilight drew
near, the boy would leave the shop and run swiftly down the narrow
street until he came to the grim old city gates. Once outside, under
the wide blue sky in the free open air of the country, he drew a long,
long breath of pleasure, and quickly found a hidden corner in the cleft
of the hoary trunk of an olive-tree, where no passer-by could see him.
There he sat, his chin resting on his hands, gazing and gazing out over
the plain below, drinking in the beauty with his hungry eyes.
How he loved that great open space of sweet fresh air, in the calm pure
light of the evening hour. That white light, which seemed to belong
more to heaven than to earth, shone on everything around. Away in the
distance the purple hills faded into the sunset sky. At his feet the
plain stretched away, away until it met the mountains, here and there
lifting itself in some little hill crowned by a lonely town whose roofs
just caught the rays of the setting sun. The evening mist lay like a
gossamer veil upon the low-lying lands, and between the little towns
the long straight road could be seen, winding like a white ribbon
through the grey and silver, and marked here and there by a dark
cypress-tree or a tall poplar. And always there would be a glint of
blue, where a stream or river caught the reflection of the sky and held
it lovingly there, like a mirror among the rocks.
But Pietro did not have much time for idle dreaming. His was not an
easy life, for Niccolo made but little money with his painting, and the
boy had to do all the work of the house besides attending to the shop.
But all the time he was sweeping and dusting he looked forward to the
happy days to come when he might paint pictures and become a famous
artist.
Whenever a visitor came to the shop, Pietro would listen eagerly to his
talk and try to learn something of the great world of Art. Sometimes he
would even venture to ask questions, if the stranger happened to be one
who had travelled from afar.
'Where are the most beautiful pictures to be found?' he asked one day
when a Florentine painter had come to the little shop and had been
describing the glories he had seen in other cities. 'And where is it
that the greatest painters dwell?'
'That is an easy question to answer, my boy,' said the painter. 'All
that is fairest is to be found in Florence, the most beautiful city in
all the world, the City of Flowers. There one may find the best of
everything, but above all, the most beautiful pictures and the greatest
of painters. For no one there can bear to do only the second best, and
a man must attain to the very highest before the Florentines will call
him great. The walls of the churches and monasteries are covered with
pictures of saints and angels, and their beauty no words can describe.'
'I too will go to Florence, said Pietro to himself, and every day he
longed more and more to see that wonderful city.
It was no use to wait until he should have saved enough money to take
him there. He scarcely earned enough to live on from day to day. So at
last, poor as he was, he started off early one morning and said
good-bye to his old master and the hard work of the little shop in
Perugia. On he went down the same long white road which had seemed so
endless to him that day when, as a little child, he first came to
Perugia. Even now, when he was a strong young man, the way seemed long
and weary across that great plain, and he was often foot-sore and
discouraged. Day after day he travelled on, past the great lake which
lay like a sapphire in the bosom of the plain, past many towns and
little villages, until at last he came in sight of the City of Flowers.
It was a wonderful moment to Perugino, and he held his breath as he
looked. He had passed the brow of the hill, and stood beside a little
stream bordered by a row of tall, straight poplars which showed silvery
white against the blue sky. Beyond, nestling at the foot of the
encircling hills, lay the city of his dreams. Towers and palaces, a
crowding together of pale red sunbaked roofs, with the great dome of
the cathedral in the midst, and the silver thread of the Arno winding
its way between--all this he saw, but he saw more than this. For it
seemed to him that the Spirit of Beauty hovered above the fair city,
and he almost heard the rustle of her wings and caught a glimpse of her
rainbow-tinted robe in the light of the evening sky.
Poor Pietro! Here was the world he longed to conquer, but he was only a
poor country boy, and how was he to begin to climb that golden ladder
of Art which led men to fame and glory?
Well, he could work, and that was always a beginning. The struggle was
hard, and for many a month he often went hungry and had not even a bed
to lie on at night, but curled himself up on a hard wooden chest. Then
good fortune began to smile upon him.
The Florentine artists to whose studios he went began to notice the
hardworking boy, and when they looked at his work, with all its faults
and want of finish, they saw in it that divine something called genius
which no one can mistake.
Then the doors of another world seemed to open to Pietro. All day long
he could now work at his beloved painting and learn fresh wonders as he
watched the great men use the brush and pencil. In the studio of the
painter Verocchio he met the men of whose fame he had so often heard,
and whose work he looked upon with awe and reverence.
There was the good-tempered monk of the Carmine, Fra Filipo Lippi, the
young Botticelli, and a youth just his own age whom they called
Leonardo da Vinci, of whom it was whispered already that he would some
day be the greatest master of the age.
These were golden days for Perugino, as he was called, for the name of
the city where he had come from was always now given to him. The
pictures he had longed to paint grew beneath his hand, and upon his
canvas began to dawn the solemn dignity and open-air spaciousness of
those evening visions he had seen when he gazed across the Umbrian
Plain. There was no noise of battle, no human passion in his pictures.
His saints stood quiet and solemn, single figures with just a thread of
interest binding them together, and always beyond was the great wide
open world, with the white light shining in the sky, the blue thread of
the river, and the single trees pointing upwards--dark, solemn cypress,
or feathery larch or poplar.
There was much for the young painter still to learn, and perhaps he
learned most from the silent teaching of that little dark chapel of the
Carmine, where Masaccio taught more wonderful lessons by his frescoes
than any living artist could teach.
Then came the crowning honour when Perugino received an invitation from
the Pope to go to Rome and paint the walls of the Sistine Chapel. Hence
forth it was a different kind of life for the young painter. No need to
wonder where he would get his next meal, no hard rough wooden chest on
which to rest his weary limbs when the day's work was done. Now he was
royally entertained and softly lodged, and men counted it an honour to
be in his company.
But though he loved Florence and was proud to do his painting in Rome,
his heart ever drew him back to the city on the hill whose name he bore.
Again he travelled along the winding road, and his heart beat fast as
he drew nearer and saw the familiar towers and roofs of Perugia. How
well he remembered that long-ago day when the cool touch of the grass
was so grateful to his little tired dusty feet! He stooped again to
fill his hands with the sweet violets, and thought them sweeter than
all the fame and fair show of the gay cities.
And as he passed through the ancient gateway and threaded his way up
the narrow street towards the little shop, he seemed to see once more
the kindly smile of his old master and to hear him say, 'Thou wilt soon
be the greatest man in Perugia, and we will call thee no longer Pietro
Vanucci, but Perugino.'
So it had come to pass. Here he was. No longer a little ragged, hungry
boy, but a man whom all delighted to honour. Truly this was a world of
changes!
A bigger studio was needed than the little old shop, for now he had
more pictures to paint than he well knew how to finish. Then, too, he
had many pupils, for all were eager to enter the studio of the great
master. There it was that one morning a new pupil was brought to him, a
boy of twelve, whose guardians begged that Perugino would teach and
train him.
Perugino looked with interest at the child. Seldom had he seen such a
beautiful oval face, framed by such soft brown curls--a face so pure
and lovable that even at first sight it drew out love from the hearts
of those who looked at him.
'His father was also a painter,' said the guardian, 'and Raphael, here,
has caught the trick of using his pencil and brush, so we would have
him learn of the greatest master in the land.'
After some talk, the boy was left in the studio at Perugia, and day by
day Perugino grew to love him more. It was not only that little Raphael
was clever and skilful, though that alone often made the master marvel.
'He is my pupil now, but some day he will be my master, and I shall
learn of him,' Perugino would often say as he watched the boy at work.
But more than all, the pure sweet nature and the polished gentleness of
his manners charmed the heart of the master, and he loved to have the
boy always near him, and to teach him was his greatest pleasure.
Those quiet days in the Perugia studio never lasted very long. From all
quarters came calls to Perugino, and, much as he loved work, he could
not finish all that was wanted.
It happened once when he was in Florence that a certain prior begged
him to come and fresco the walls of his convent. This prior was very
famous for making a most beautiful and expensive blue colour which he
was anxious should be used in the painting of the convent walls. He was
a mean, suspicious man, and would not trust Perugino with the precious
blue colour, but always held it in his own hands and grudgingly doled
it out in small quantities, torn between the desire to have the colour
on his walls and his dislike to parting with anything so precious.
As Perugino noted this, he grew angry and determined to punish the
prior's meanness. The next time therefore that there was a blue sky to
be painted, he put at his side a large bowl of fresh water, and then
called on the prior to put out a small quantity of the blue colour in a
little vase. Each time he dipped his brush into the vase, Perugino
washed it out with a swirl in the bowl at his side, so that most of the
colour was left in the water, and very little was put on to the picture.
'I pray thee fill the vase again with blue,' he said carelessly when
the colour was all gone. The prior groaned aloud, and turned grudgingly
to his little bag.
'Oh what a quantity of blue is swallowed up by this plaster!' he said,
as he gazed at the white wall, which scarcely showed a trace of the
precious colour.
'Yes,' said Perugino cheerfully, 'thou canst see thyself how it goes.'
Then afterwards, when the prior had sadly gone off with his little
empty bag, Perugino carefully poured the water from the bowl and
gathered together the grains of colour which had sunk to the bottom.
'Here is something that belongs to thee,' he said sternly to the
astonished prior. 'I would have thee learn to trust honest men and not
treat them as thieves. For with all thy suspicious care, it was easy to
rob thee if I had had a mind.'
During all these years in which Perugino had worked so diligently, the
art of painting had been growing rapidly. Many of the new artists shook
off the old rules and ideas, and began to paint in quite a new way.
There was one man especially, called Michelangelo, whose story you will
hear later on, who arose like a giant, and with his new way and greater
knowledge swept everything before him.
Perugino was jealous of all these new ideas, and clung more closely
than ever to his old ideals, his quiet, dignified saints, and spacious
landscapes. He talked openly of his dislike of the new style, and once
he had a serious quarrel with the great Michelangelo.
There was a gathering of painters in Perugino's studio that day.
Filippino Lippi, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, and Leonardo were there, and
in the background the pupil Raphael was listening to the talk.
'What dost thou think of this new style of painting?' asked Botticelli.
'To me it seems but strange and unpleasing. Music and motion are
delightful, but this violent twisting of limbs to show the muscles
offends my taste.'
'Yet it is most marvellously skilful,' said the young Leonardo
thoughtfully.
'But totally unfit for the proper picturing of saints and the blessed
Madonna,' said Filippino, shaking his curly head.
'I never trouble myself about it,' said Ghirlandaio. 'Life is too short
to attend to other men's work. It takes all my care and attention to
look after mine own. But see, here comes the great Michelangelo himself
to listen to our criticism.'
The curious, rugged face of the great artist looked good-naturedly on
the company, but his strong knotted hands waved aside their greetings.
'So you were busy as usual finding fault with my work,' he said. 'Come,
friend Perugino, tell me what thou hast found to grumble at.'
'I like not thy methods, and that I tell thee frankly,' answered
Perugino, an angry light shining in his eyes. 'It is such work as thine
that drags the art of painting down from the heights of heavenly things
to the low taste of earth. It robs it of all dignity and restfulness,
and destroys the precious traditions handed down to us since the days
of Giotto.'
The face of Michelangelo grew angry and scornful as he listened to this.
'Thou art but a dolt and a blockhead in Art,' he said. 'Thou wilt soon
see that the day of thy saints and Madonnas is past, and wilt cease to
paint them over and over again in the same manner, as a child doth his
lesson in a copy book.'
Then he turned and went out of the studio before any one had time to
answer him.
Perugino was furiously angry and would not listen to reason, but must
needs go before the great Council and demand that they should punish
Michelangelo for his hard words. This of course the Council refused to
do, and Perugino left Florence for Perugia, angry and sore at heart.
It seemed hard, after all his struggles and great successes, that as he
grew old people should begin to tire of his work, which they had once
thought so perfect.
But if the outside world was sometimes disappointing, he had always his
home to turn to, and his beautiful wife Chiare. He had married her in
his beloved Perugia, and she meant all the joy of life to him. He was
so proud of her beauty that he would buy her the richest dresses and
most costly jewels, and with his own hands would deck her with them.
Her brown eyes were like the depths of some quiet pool, her fair face
and the wonderful soul that shone there were to him the most perfect
picture in the world.
'I will paint thee once, that the world may be the richer,' said
Perugino, 'but only once, for thy beauty is too rare for common use.
And I will paint thee not as an earthly beauty, but thou shalt be the
angel in the story of Tobias which thou knowest.'
So he painted her as he said. And in our own National Gallery we still
have the picture, and we may see her there as the beautiful angel who
leads the little boy Tobias by the hand.
Up to the very last years of his life, Perugino painted as diligently
as he had ever done, but the peaceful days of Perugia had long since
given place to war and tumult, both within and without the city. Then
too a terrible plague swept over the countryside, and people died by
thousands.
To the hospital of Fartignano, close to Perugia, they carried Perugino
when the deadly plague seized him, and there he died. There was no time
to think of grand funerals; the people were buried as quickly as
possible, in whatever place lay closest at hand.
So it came to pass that Perugino was laid to rest in an open field
under an oak-tree close by. Later on his sons wished to have him buried
in holy ground, and some say that this was done, but nothing is known
for certain. Perhaps if he could have chosen, he would have been glad
to think that his body should rest under the shelter of the trees he
loved to paint, in that waste openness of space which had always been
his vision of beauty, since, as a little boy, he gazed across the
Umbrian Plain, and the wonder of it sank into his soul.