The natural features of Umbrian scenery, its high-skied plains, its wide valleys, account in a measure for the pre-eminent feeling for space shown by its artists, and for their power to give air and atmosphere to those lofty structures in which they love to place their personages. These little panels, painted at Fiorenzo’s finest period, are sharp and strong, yet fine as miniatures. The figures stand well on the stage. The point of sight is very low, at scarce a third of the whole, so that we have an undue proportion of airy surrounding, though all is on such a small scale. The perspective drawing shows how well-fitted Fiorenzo was to ground his pupil accurately in this, however insufficient his study of anatomy may have been. The drawing of the architecture is fine and true throughout, but in the figures, even if we allow for variations in Fiorenzo himself, we can hardly avoid seeing two different hands. They have all the charm of his manner, a manner essentially Umbrian, while we see a very distinct spirit, a spirit which was shared by Bonfigli, and by such a lesser master as Boccatis da Camerino, a naïve and cheerful tone, a direct simplicity, which is as far removed from the melancholy which broods in the eyes of the rapt saints of Siena, as it is from the scientific temper that ruled within sound of the Arno. Many of the figures are childish in their desire to express emotion, and are almost grotesque in detail, the hair is in a mop, exaggerated till it looks like a huge bird’s nest, the hands are cramped and claw-like, but here and there we meet with graceful, well-proportioned beings, keeping their slender grace, without the angular and unpleasing length of limb which marks their companions. In the panel where San Bernardino raises a youth from the dead, a child playing with a dog recalls Pintoricchio’s putti on the pilasters at Siena. The young man on the right in the same scene, is supple and gracefully draped; a contrast to the wooden movements and stiff draperies of his fellow-pages. Even better is the youth reasoning, in a repetition of the same miracle, with his hand upon his hip and a dark cap perched upon his rippled curls.
Alinari photo] [Picture Gallery, Perugia
A MIRACLE OF SAN BERNARDINO
(By Fiorenzo di Lorenzo)
We begin to speculate as to whether Pintoricchio, who was a young man of twenty-two at this time, was helping Fiorenzo; and to ask, Have we here the sign of that talent which was marked by Perugino, with whom he must have been for some years, before he was chosen as his chief assistant in the Sixtine Chapel? Above all, Pintoricchio’s landscape is derived from Fiorenzo. The open distance, cut up by small hills and trees, the winding streams flowing through the valleys, and, most characteristic, the poised and toppling rocks, forming archways and overhanging masses, often set about with houses and peopled with tiny figures. An examination of the “Crucifixion” in the Borghese, illustrates the difficulty at this time of distinguishing between Fiorenzo and his pupil. The hard brightness of colour, the drawing of the crucified figure and that of St. Christopher, the heavily marked folds of drapery, the landscape—all recall Fiorenzo; but the figure and head of St. Jerome, the hands, the expressive head of St. Christopher, the free and natural attitude of the Child, are something better than we look for in the earlier painter. If we may really accept this panel, as both Morelli and Berenson assert, as Pintoricchio’s work, we may place it as his earliest on his arrival in Rome. The St. Christopher and the Moses of the meeting with the angel in the Sixtine, seem drawn from the same model. The round forehead, full mouth, shape of jaw and broad throat are identical, and it is a very individual face.
His knowledge of architecture, his composition of landscape, the type of many of his figures, Pintoricchio derived from Fiorenzo, and Fiorenzo’s was the influence that remained with him most strongly; but though permeating him less thoroughly, less akin to his own temper, Perugino, his elder by only four years, a much greater master, both as regards form and colour, had something to say to his development. We cannot tell when the two first came into contact, but Morelli considers that Perugino went to Florence about 1470. Milanesi, in his notes on Perugino’s life by Vasari, says that he received a commission to paint in the Palazzo Pubblico in Perugia in 1475. He was certainly working in 1478 at Cerqueto, in Umbria, so that most likely it was about that date that Pintoricchio joined him, which would have given them at least four years together, before the time came to go to Rome.
We have so little knowledge of any work of Pintoricchio’s before his Roman period, that it is difficult to certainly assign paintings to this time. The “Crucifixion” shows no trace of Perugino, but the boy’s head at Dresden, which Morelli believes to be an early work, has the solid character and realism which distinguish Perugino’s portraits. His influence comes out fully developed in the Sixtine frescoes. That the two men had been working together for some time is obvious, not only by the importance of the share with which the younger was entrusted, but also by the number of drawings which he prepared for Perugino’s own frescoes. The elder painter’s guiding hand is apparent in the draping, simpler and larger than that of Fiorenzo, the more careful drawing and calmer dignity.
These frescoes might possibly be taken for Perugino’s, but scarcely for Fiorenzo’s; and though Pintoricchio still adheres to the traditions of the latter in his treatment of the details of landscape, he begins to formulate his own scheme of colour and composition. In his angels flying forward from above, on either side of a group of sacred persons, Perugino is copied almost stroke for stroke (allowing for Pintoricchio’s heavier touch) in the assimilation of motifs drawn from older masters. The fold of drapery falling between the knees and narrowing to a point, the over-sleeve flying out in a sweeping curve, the draped tunic and the fluttering ribbons, all become a formula of Perugino’s manner—adopted by all his followers—Lo Spagna, Tiberio d’Assisi, and the rest. Yet, where the treatment approaches most nearly, there remains a constantly differing type. Perugino, in a half-profile, almost invariably inclines the head one way or another, giving to the eye a peculiar ecstatic upward gaze. Pintoricchio rarely uses this attitude. In his drawing of St. John, for Perugino’s fresco, of the giving of the keys, this is just the change the older master, on adopting it, has made to suit his fancy. Pintoricchio has an ineradicable tendency to bring the knees of his figures together. They sway with a peculiar, knock-kneed grace. If we contrast the central group in the “Baptism of Christ” in the Sixtine, with those of Perugino at Rouen, or that at Foligno, painted many years later, we note the sweep inward from the hips, and outward from the knees in the first, while the inclined head and upward gaze in Perugino’s St. John gives place to a more simple and direct expression in that of his pupil. We are always conscious, too, of a less strong, less confident spirit—one more nervous, more personally reflective of moods and idiosyncrasies.
The golden atmospheric effects which were Perugino’s greatest gift to art, the feeling for distance, and for the sun-warmed calm of summer, taught Pintoricchio new methods, modified without effacing the teaching of Fiorenzo, and certainly led to a more natural treatment. That Fiorenzo was impressed by the vigorous art of Signorelli, his neighbour of Cortona, is to be seen in his late work, “The Adoration of the Magi.” The young men, more strongly drawn than is customary with him, the kings in Eastern dress, the heads of Joseph and of the old king, the drawing of the hands and the Madonna’s draperies—all show a freer and closer study of nature, all point to some fresh impulse, the impression of a strong talent upon a weaker one.
The problems which absorbed the great master of Cortona had never much attraction for Pintoricchio, who had not a scientific mind, and whose artistic education, deficient to begin with, was brought to a premature end by his sudden popularity. Yet something he drew from Signorelli, a firmer treatment of the youths in hose and doublet, some attempt to study limbs and muscle. The series left by Benozzo Gozzoli at Montefalco, the paintings of Perugino and Signorelli, were the best examples of form which came in Pintoricchio’s way. They could not succeed in making him very strong, but when he draws frankly from the life, you need hardly wish for more telling portraits.