In the “Assumption,” which fills the opposite wall, the figures are too ill drawn to allow us to think they can be Pintoricchio’s. The arms are too short, the feet out of drawing, the figure of the Madonna is unnaturally long, with sloping shoulders. Crowe and Cavalcaselle were the first to suggest as its author Matteo Balducci, a painter who has left several panels at Siena, which were for long assigned to Pintoricchio, under whom he worked in Rome. The “Virgin and Child, with Saints” over the altar is a very inferior work, entirely repainted. Round the top of the wall runs a series of scenes from the life of the Virgin. These have been attributed to the North Italian, Morto da Feltre. They are certainly not by Pintoricchio.
There remains, then, only the little chapel of St. Jerome, which, in spite of some restoration and some destruction, we can attribute to the master. It has the freshness of early work, and both in colouring and style is akin to that of San Bernardino in Ara Cœli, while the influence of Fiorenzo has re-asserted itself. Over the altar is the “Nativity,” which bears so close a resemblance to the older master’s “Adoration” at Perugia. In the finished sketch at Venice, for the tender figure of the Madonna, the drapery has the stair-like gradations of folds on both sides, which Morelli points out as characteristic of him, and the same critic draws attention to the type of hand, with long, bony fingers, that we find in his later Madonna dei Fossi. The landscape, which is soft and deep in tone, resembles that of the frescoes in the Sixtine Chapel. In two, at least, of the little series of the life of St. Jerome, we recognise Pintoricchio’s own hand. In one, the doctors of the Church come to visit the saint after he has retired to the desert. The study for the lion in this scene is in his sketch-book. On the other side of the chapel is the exquisite little panel in which St. Jerome argues a point of doctrine with an infidel. This is a bit of genre-painting with all the charm the Umbrian painters understood so well. The red-robed saint sits in his great arm-chair; opposite him is placed a stately doctor in blue. Disciples are grouped on either hand, some have turbaned heads to suggest their unbelieving origin. Behind stand favourite dogs, and St. Jerome’s faithful lion. The scene is lit up by the painting of a little window in the centre, through which the company looks out on a sunny landscape, with trees and a lake lying in mellow light and floating evening shades. A rich cloth hangs across the broad sill. The idea of the little outlook, throwing air and contrast into the interior, is one often afterwards elaborated by Pintoricchio, and apparently was suggested to him by a panel in Fiorenzo’s miracles of San Bernardino.
In the Capitol is a fresco painting which Mr. Berenson ascribes to our master. Vasari speaks of his having painted such an altar-piece, but this, if the same, was entirely repainted in 1834. The colour of the angels’ robes was changed—one from red to yellow, the other from yellow to white. The Virgin’s robe, now blue, was originally green. The face is painted out of all recognition. The shape is not oval, the mouth is full with parted lips, and the hair falls on either side of the face. The angels, with knees bending outward, are not Pintoricchio’s type—only the Child recalls his Infant in the “Nativity” of Santa Maria del Popolo and the hands are like his in outline.
In the tribune of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme is a great composition of the “Finding of the True Cross,” which tradition has assigned to him among others and which has strong traces of Umbrian workmanship. This is entirely and heavily repainted, and its artistic value is nil, except for the design. We should welcome even such an obscured reminiscence as this, if it remained to us, of the paintings in Castel Sant’ Angelo. On a blue, starred vault, the Saviour is surrounded by a mandorla of cherubs. Below, St. Helena stands, holding the cross, with the donor, Cardinal Carvajal, kneeling at her feet. On either side are the miracles attending its recovery. On the left, the Emperor Heraclius rides in triumph, bearing the cross, rescued from infidels, to the city gates. The groups of women on the extreme left, and some of those standing behind the Empress-saint, are full of likeness to Pintoricchio’s figures in the “Journey of Moses,” and the landscape (the only part which has not been quite repainted), with its purple tints, overhanging rocks, and parties of wayfarers, recalls the work of Fiorenzo. The whole has something of the direct simplicity of Pintoricchio’s narratives, but other figures remind us of Signorelli—the forms are heavy and lumpy, and it is probably only by a follower, though one who closely imitated the Umbrian master.
[CHAPTER V]
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.