PINTORICCHIO: HIS LIFE, WORK, AND TIME. By Corrado Ricci. Translated by Florence Simmons. William Heinemann, 1902.
The publication by Mr. Heinemann of a large, costly, and elaborately illustrated book upon Pintoricchio is evidence that this long-neglected Umbrian painter is growing in popularity. Effaced for more than two and a half centuries by the dazzling radiance of his younger contemporary’s fame, Pintoricchio’s individuality, first appreciated by Rumohr, began clearly to stand out again only when Morelli demonstrated that he was the author of two frescoes in the Sixtine chapel. Even then he borrowed his lustre from working where Michelangelo left his masterpieces, and from having, as Morelli pointed out, influenced Raphael. It remained for the anarchical taste of recent years to exalt him into an important ‘Master’ on his own account. ¶ The occasion was offered by the reopening in 1897 of the Borgia apartments, which he decorated; for although the popes may have lost their power to immortalize themselves by feats of statesmanship, the ambition to signalize their pontificates by the patronage of art appears not wholly to have died out. Leo XIII in restoring and opening to the public the magnificent suite of rooms where, in the service of Alexander VI, Pintoricchio toiled to make a monument to his patron, was no less the maker of an artistic reputation than his Renaissance predecessors—with the significant difference, however, that he conferred a posthumous fame, a succès d’archéologie, instead of the renown that came from the commission to rebuild and decorate that city of cities which has now passed from under the papal sway. ¶ But, unless the lay world had been independently attuned to Pintoricchio’s art, papal patronage would not have carried his renown far. But modern art is just at a point where Pintoricchio is really more sympathetic than the masters of the great style, for in the break-up of artistic tradition and the decline of classical taste the decorator of to-day is thrown back upon parading the mere materials of his art, upon bright colour and relief, upon sumptuousness, and the startling and attractive. He has, in fact, dedicated himself to ornamentation—for we must not debase the word decoration! And of ornamentation, of the sumptuous, the attractive, the gay and the ingenious, Pintoricchio was a master. The gorgeousness of the Borgia apartments delude even critics who ought to distinguish more subtly, into praising them as art. It is so difficult to be stern with the attractive! ¶ And so Pintoricchio, becoming popular, needed a handsome book to reveal him further to his English admirers; and for them, being English, a volume of mere illustrations, like the French tome of M. Boyer d’Agen, did not suffice. There must be the flavour of pedantry, of Morellianism, of research into origins, without omitting the necessary historical setting. And so the publisher commissioned the valiant Dr. Ricci, head of the great gallery of the Brera, to prepare such a work, knowing well that he could not entrust it to more skilful and conscientious hands. But, contrary to the Biblical story, instead of blessing Israel the emissary of Balak was unable to keep his tongue from curses! Dr. Ricci’s taste was too cultivated, his experience of great art too profound, to permit him to raise the chosen painter to the altar prepared for him, and the publisher was thus constrained to write a short ‘Note’ explaining that, in spite of what the author says, Pintoricchio really is a great artist, standing only just below ‘the three or four supreme masters’—close, that is to say, to Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Giorgione! Turning, however, to Dr. Ricci’s estimate, we find it absolutely sane and just:—‘Pintoricchio ... was more attracted by the external splendours of art than by its sentiment ... is wholly destitute of passion ... and shows but little research in the matter of expression.’ And instead of joining in the unreserved praise accorded to him in the publisher’s ‘Note’ as a ‘master of decoration,’ he, on the contrary, criticizes his artist’s gaudiness and his lack of composition, and utters a protest, particularly welcome at the present moment, against the use of raised ornament in decorative painting. Indeed, while Morelli’s account of Pintoricchio leaves the reader with a general sense that he was to be preferred to his master Perugino, Dr. Ricci nowhere loses his sense of proportion, nowhere unduly exalts the subject of his work, and the resulting impression of his long book is to place Pintoricchio in a just relation to the artists of his time: attractive, sweet, agreeable, ‘exuberant and instinctively elegant,’ but almost never entering into rivalry with any master who possessed, in however small a degree, any of the specifically artistic qualities. His treatment, indeed, of Pintoricchio’s greatest work, the frescoes of the cathedral library of Siena, scarcely does justice to the real artistic merits of the decorative scheme. As these works so far surpass the frescoes of the Borgia apartments, the impression they give of ‘gaiety and well-being,’ which Dr. Ricci barely touches on, might well have been amplified. But one is grateful to him for pronouncing himself so clearly against the current notion that the young Raphael assisted Pintoricchio in these frescoes, instead of mystifying us with the usual non-committal generalities on this subject; and also for ranging himself so openly with Morelli and against Signor Venturi in refusing the absurd ascription of Gentile Bellini’s drawings to Pintoricchio. He calls attention to a phrase in Gentile’s will which speaks of drawings of his in Rome, thus amply accounting for the introduction of figures similar to those in Gentile’s sketches into the Roman frescoes of the Umbrian painter so notoriously given to pilfering. ¶ Singularly full and complete is Dr. Ricci’s list of Pintoricchio’s works; indeed, the fault lies just in this! While we thank him for sparing no pains to look up every possible work of his painter, we must reproach him with being too liberal in questions of authenticity. It is particularly among what Dr. Ricci considers the early works that we find him too generous. It is in my opinion quite impossible that Pintoricchio should have executed the Presentation at Torre d’ Andrea, which shows so many of the characteristics of that (deservedly) little known painter, Antonio da Viterbo[85], while the copy at Siena of the central figures in the great ancona of 1498 at Perugia cannot of course be, as he supposes, an early work, and seems to me too crude and flaccid to be by him at any period of his career. The early Madonna in the Bufalini collection at Città di Castello I cannot clearly remember, but the ruined Madonna with the infant John in the duomo of that town could certainly never have been touched by Pintoricchio’s own hand, and Lord Crawford’s Madonna and Angels at Wigan is too cold and hard for him, and indeed seems to be the work of some Romagnol imitator of Pintoricchio, whose youthful hand was trained under the benumbing influence of Palmezzano. ¶ I regret that I cannot quite follow our author in his chronology of Pintoricchio’s works, for the clear arrangement of which at the end of his book he nevertheless earns our gratitude. The assumption that the Ara Coeli frescoes were painted after those in the Sixtine chapel seems to me to confuse Dr. Ricci’s view of the chronology from the start. To my eyes they are clearly earlier works, although I know that Morelli here for once agreed with Crowe and Cavalcaselle, and dated them as late as 1496. But the whole question is by no means clear, and I confess to being unable to discover in Dr. Ricci’s book the exact criteria he uses to determine the date of a particular work. The Sienese tondo which he calls early seems to me definitely to belong to the period after 1500, and the two Madonnas at Spello do not convince me that they are early, or even that they are of the same date. Dr. Ricci professes himself not quite convinced of the adequacy of internal evidence; nevertheless, like all unbelievers, he constantly takes refuge in it, but not consistently, and it is this uncertainty of method which, perhaps more than anything else, prevents our following his conclusions with intelligent sympathy. And this one regrets the more, because with the broad lines of his book, and, above all, with his estimate of Pintoricchio, one has such hearty sympathy. ¶ A word of protest must be added about the strange translation and about certain carelessness apparent in the book-making. ‘Coetanean’ is an odd word to meet on the first page, and surely Dr. Ricci never spoke of the ‘coast of Subasio’! ‘S. Bernardine,’ or, worse still, ‘San Bernardine,’ is not a happy way of anglicizing the name of the Sienese saint, nor is ‘Cybo’ an improvement upon the usual form. ‘Enea’ recurs in an irritating manner, where every cultivated English person expects Aeneas; for, since Bishop Creighton’s sympathetic account, ‘Aeneas Silvius,’ whether as humanist or pope, has become a familiar name. Just here, by the way, I may express my surprise that among Dr. Ricci’s historical references for Pope Alexander VI (p. 87) he did not place Creighton’s account, the best in English, or perhaps in any language. ¶ The subject of the first coloured plate is misnamed ‘S. Bernardino,’ although in the text correctly described as St. Louis of Toulouse. And this leads me to protest against cheap colour reproductions of this kind. The feeblest, young-lady water-colour sketch after Pintoricchio could not resemble him less than these coarse, smeared, falsely-tinted reproductions. They are worse than useless; they are hideously misleading. The other illustrations of the book, however, are copious and accurate, and we cannot be too grateful for the reproduction of so many of the pictures in private collections, photographs of which it is often almost impossible for the student to procure. M. L.
ANCIENT COFFERS AND CUPBOARDS. By Fred Roe. Methuen & Co.
Mr. Fred Roe’s book of ancient coffers and cupboards must surely be the first of many such monographs. To-day the process block has made it possible to illustrate with ease the most elaborate details of the work of the ancient craftsmen, and within the covers of a book we may bear home our museum to be pored over at leisure. And here we have the chosen pieces of many museums, many churches, and many collectors’ hoards, in a form which makes them as useful to the new craftsmen as to the antiquary. It is true that Mr. Roe has not given us process work alone. Although such illustrations as those of the famous chest of the twelve knights at the Cluny and the St. George chest at South Kensington leave nothing to be desired, Mr. Roe does not allow it to be forgotten that he can use a pencil with effect. His drawings, although they have nothing of the tight and T-squared manner familiar in architects’ drawings of old pieces, yet give a pleasant impression of truth and trustworthiness, and err not on the side of that dangerous cleverness which so often persuaded that great man M. Viollet le Duc to translate ornament and detail from every scratch and stain of his model. With a volume of the Mobilier Français at hand Mr. Roe may be at issue with the Frenchman on a definite point. Here we have the great armoire of Noyon as presented spick and span in the coloured drawing of M. Viollet le Duc, and here we have it also from the pencil of Mr. Roe. To our mind Mr. Roe seems the more trustworthy interpreter, but one or other is at fault. On the first of the eight doors of the armoire Mr. Roe gives us a figure of the Virgin in a sweeping robe, holding the Child in her arms. M. Viollet le Duc, with abundant detail, gives us the same door with a bare-legged St. John Baptist in his camel’s hair, supporting in his arms a lamb. ¶ It is no disparagement to Mr. Roe’s written commentary to say that the early history of the chest is told clearly enough by his well-arranged series of drawings and photographs. We owe him thanks that he has avoided the temptation which would persuade the writer upon any side of English archaeology to gallop through his subject from Stonehenge to the great exhibition within the covers of a single book. Here we have the history of the mediaeval chest, from the thirteenth-century examples with which we must perforce begin, to the end of the Gothic work in the fifteen hundreds. There Mr. Roe stays, and for the story of the Elizabeth and seventeenth-century chests, which are still in such plenty amongst us, we may wait in good content for Mr. Roe’s future work. ¶ To those who are familiar with inventories, and wills, and such-like documents of the intimate life of our ancestors, the picture of the ancient English home rises up furnished with a bed, a brass pot, and a chest; for these good things came ever foremost amongst the few household goods of folk of the middling sort. It would be difficult to say where the collector might lay his hand nowadays upon the woodwork of a mediaeval bed; the brass pots have for the most part served their day and gone back to the foundry furnace; but the oaken chest remains here and there in the countryside for a most curious and venerable relic. ¶ We can hardly doubt that the familiar chest was from the beginning cunningly decorated; but accurate knowledge begins with the thirteenth century, with vast fronts of one or more broad beams set longways between two broad uprights. For ornament we have suggestions of arch-work simply indicated with chiselled lines and roundels of tracery. The ends are solidly framed with massive timbers. Of painted chests a notable example remains at Newport in Essex, and this Mr. Roe shows us in its colours. The inside of the lid when upreared shows like a painted reredos with a rood, the Virgin and St. John, and St. Peter and St. Paul, each within a painted archway of reds and greens. Twelve shields appear upon the chest, but on these remains no trace of the painted bearings which would have told us the story of the piece. Below the twelve shields, fessewise across the front of the chest runs a most singular ornament, a broad band of open tracery cast in pewter. ¶ The thirteenth century closes with the richly ornamented chest-fronts which endure for the rest of the medieval period. The long chest in Saltwood church is assigned by Mr. Roe to the century-end. The front is covered with tracery work with deep mullions, the broad uprights at the ends being filled with winged dragons in square panels. To this century-end belongs also that most famous and glorious chest which is the pride of the Musée Cluny, along whose mullioned front stand twelve knights with shields and ailettes of their arms; and here again we feel that, although the lighting of Mr. Roe’s photograph was unfortunate, our modern illustrations must take the place of Viollet le Duc’s too highly wrought drawings. ¶ Throughout the fourteenth century we find in England the traditional window tracery along the chest front, and the dragons or beasts in squared compartments of the broad uprights. From Hultoft, in Lincolnshire, we have in a late fourteenth-century chest an early example of a panelled and buttressed piece, in which pierced and cut-out tracery has been applied to a flush front. A lid painted inside with shields of arms belongs to a chest formerly in the Chancery court of Durham, and, apart from its beauty, claims our interest by the fact that the first shield is that of the Aungerviles, of whom came Richard of Bury, bishop of Durham, and author of the ‘Philobiblon,’ one of those few mediaeval books which yet find readers. Concerning this shield, we may remark that Mr. Roe’s ‘Gules, a cinquefoil or (or argent) ermine pierced (of the field?)’ is not a very lucid piece of blazonry. Between the shields a dragon meets with a centaur-like figure in yellow hood and red kilt ‘running a tilt,’ as Mr. Roe somewhat loosely phrases it, but really playing with the sword and buckler. Forty-five years ago this chest was still in the Chancery court; if we ask why it is now in the hands of an ‘eminent antiquary,’ we should have for answer a familiar story of the ignorance and wanton folly of our half-civilized English official classes. A sad side of Mr. Roe’s narrative is the recurrent exclamation at the fact that a church chest, perfect in the days of Parker, Cotman, or Shaw, is now staved in, or clumsily restored. This in such cases where the chest has been suffered to remain. The Wittersham chest does not seem to have stayed at Wittersham long after its beauties had been published to the world in a ‘Dictionary of Architecture,’ and the fact that the nameless connoisseur who removed it took with him the ancient parish stocks as well leaves Wittersham without the means of dealing with the offence of those who should have been its custodians. Parker engraves a famous chest at Guestling, of which but one panel remained when the present rector came to Guestling, and even this poor relic has gone the way of the rest. It would be well if the thief were the one enemy of such treasures—in that case the nation might come to its own some day; but the church stove, even in our own time, has crackled with fuel for the loss of which our descendants will curse their pig-hearted ancestry. ¶ Of the most interesting type, which Mr. Roe, who shuns the English word chest, is pleased to call a ‘tilting coffer,’ we are afforded a valuable set of pictures. It is good to see that perhaps the finest panel of St. George and his dragon and Dame Cleodolinde is in our own national collection at South Kensington. The barbarously fine chest at Ypres will stand to all who know it for a familiar example. Mr. Roe, being possessed with the idea that these figured chests are English in design and working, is persuaded that the Ypres chest may have been abandoned by the English army which sieged Ypres in 1383; but we may confess that we find no notably English feeling in this chest or its fellows. ¶ To follow the story of the gothic chest to its running to seed in the sixteenth century were to encroach upon the office of Mr. Roe’s excellent monograph. Mr. Roe’s work is clear and to the point. We feel that he has not only drawn and photographed, but handled and rummaged the chests of which he tells us. He is cunning in hinges and locks, and forgeries of respectable standing and the mis-datings of long tradition do not entangle him. It may perhaps be said of his terminology that he attaches too definite and settled a meaning to the words which he chooses to apply to various forms of the objects of his study. The definition of a coffer as ‘a box of great strength for the keeping and transport of weighty articles, having its front formed by a single panel,’ as distinct from a hutch, ‘a household coffer of a rough description,’ strikes us as too assured and exact. A more serious blemish arises from Mr. Roe’s apparent belief that from the character of the work upon a chest one may easily guess whether its first home were in church or hall. The familiar window tracery of many chest-fronts spells for him plainly church or monastery. By the same token Mr. Roe would have us set down for a churchman every fourteenth-century man who wore ‘Poules windowes’ cut in his shoe leather, and the knights and dragons of many miserere-seats would show him that the first place of their setting-up was in the castle hall. Another odd fancy of Mr. Roe’s persuades him that the ‘civil wars,’ apparently those of the king and commonwealth, account for the loss of many pieces of English gothic furniture. Such a fancy does not argue an intimate knowledge of the history of the seventeenth-century struggles, than which no wars have been waged with less sacking and burning; and Mr. Roe, as his last words show, knows full well that the fellest enemies of our mediaeval relics flourished in the nineteenth century in the close and the rectory, sat at high tables of old foundations, and even came to good credit as scholars and antiquaries. There are honoured names amongst us to-day whose bearers have done deeds of destruction to which Merciful Strickalthrow or Corporal Humgudgeon would not have set their hands.
O. B.