(SIENA)
]
And now Perugia and Urbino become central to the art of Italy.
Pinturicchio, Perugino, and Raphael rule the time, and the time is a
great one. Perugino may not be to us all that criticism held him to be
in the time of reaction against the love of the Carracci—who were the
greatest (as well as the latest) of all the Italians, in the grotesque
opinion of Horace Walpole. On its way back to the older Florentines, the
taste of the dilettante paused upon Pietro Perugino as on a master
comparatively early, tender, spiritual, and candid. It was a higher
thing to admire the recollected and feminine attitude of a saint of his
under a blue sky than the muscular action of a saint of Guercino’s
against a convention of cloud; and the little tree of the Umbrian
background than the gloomy Neapolitan’s twisted forests. And with this
master of Raphael is Raphael’s father, Giovanni Santi, contemporaries
together, and heralds and forerunners of the painter whom nearly all men
love to praise. In relation to children Giovanni Santi seems to be
memorable chiefly by reason of a little girl, a daughter of donors, set
on her knees in front of her father and mother to offer her devotions to
the Bambino of a pale Madonna—a Bambino having nothing remarkable,
granted the time and school. But this little girl in her close cap, who
is evidently there because the pair behind her have no son, is purely
childlike, and kneels, like a child, on both knees, simple and erect,
her hands before her and the soles of her feet behind her, under her
little sombre petticoat. Santi’s angels are much like those of Balducci,
if Balducci it be—winged heads of veritable children making a crown.
Their roundness is here in contrast with the worn and patient Saints, a
wrinkled Saint Francis of Assisi showing his transfixed hands, Saint
John the Baptist hollow-cheeked, Saint John the Evangelist in extreme
old age (we must suppose that the donor’s name is John, like the
painter’s); and Saint Sebastian only of the four is young, and his whole
body is pierced with arrows. Of Perugino’s many Bambini none has more
sweetness than the Child whom a young angel has placed on a cushion so
that the Virgin’s hands, released from their burden, might be folded. To
some charming angel, almost feminine in action, many a master has given
this office, making of the heavenly youth a little nurse for a time, so
that the maternal knees, all day long the throne of Christ, may be bent
and press the earth like those of all mankind. The Child here has the
beauty of a direct look, meeting the Virgin’s eyes, and his hands have
the action of a child; hardly so the boy Saint John with his light cross
against his shoulder, daintily kneeling upon one knee.
It would be hard if in Pinturicchio’s gaiety the children of his
pictures had not their part. And there is actually something cheerful in
the two figures of Christ and Saint John (in the Siena Accademia), the
one in a patterned vestment, the other in his camel’s hair, both with
their feet curiously laced. The attitudes are arbitrary and not
infantine, but there is a smile closed within the face, and especially
within the mouth, of each. In the Città di Castello picture, the young
Saint John has something recalling the sprightly look of a San
Giovannino of Filippo or Filippino Lippi, but at some distance.
Pinturicchio’s gaiety is not quite Florentine; the gentler city had, if
not the lighter heart, the lighter wit, and the Tuscan smile is more
intelligent. Pinturicchio’s is rather a doll-like Bambino in this
beautiful picture, small-headed, but the expression is tender, much more
explicitly and intelligibly tender than is usual in this age. The young
Saint John takes here the benediction of his Lamb.
The same Saint John, grown a man, preaches to a little boy, in the Siena
Cathedral. Pinturicchio, repeating yet once more the ever-unintelligible
failure of the fifteenth-century Italian to make any Saint do what he
himself could not but do—give his hands vivacity to carry a meaning—can
think of nothing better than that poor ineptitude of gesture I have
already mentioned; his Baptist convinces the audience before him,
including the little boy, by counting his reasonings and proofs on his
left fingers with his right. See how unable are also the other hands,
and how ineloquent; a young man lifts one hand in the gesture wherewith
the whole art of Italy wearies us, and the boy crosses his two hands
over his breast, not child-wise. But there is an unwonted thought in the
placing of this little auditor in the forefront, for he is not a saint
by name, but only a very good Umbrian. In the minds of English people,
doubtless the most conspicuous Pinturicchio child-Christ is the curled
one standing by the prettiest of Madonnas on a carpeted parapet, in the
National Gallery picture. The prettiest she is, with each eye larger
than her mouth, and the Child stands with a kind of Perugino salience of
the hip. His little features are gathered close together under a vast
forehead. But in these two faces, so conventional and rigid in their
beauty, the genius of Pinturicchio and the habit of feeling of the
fifteenth-century have placed sanctity and a remote tranquillity.
[Illustration:
PERUGINO. MADONNA AND CHILD WITH THE LITTLE ST. JOHN
]
As for Mantegna, few infants of his have become the darlings of the
Galleries, but there is something memorable in the slightest of his
designs. The Madonna of one of his drawings, whose long mantle comes
into the foreground with something Flemish in its angular folds, has
laid her Son upon the end of this garment spread upon the ground. He is
the youngest and most helpless of the Children of the Masters, but
Mantegna’s grave hand has moulded with power the powerless bent limbs
and closed hands of the new-born. There is a suggestion of the North in
this figure as well as in the drapery.