Most of the decorations of the lower walls have been repainted, following the fragmentary traces that remained, or, where these were quite obliterated, they have been replaced with harmonious hangings. The minor decorations of the halls are a study in themselves, and are the more interesting as it is evident that the artist has superintended the whole, subordinating the marble work, the painting of the lower panels, and even the tiled floor to suit his scheme of colour.
It is extraordinary that no contract for these rooms has been discovered. No sign of the agreement for them remains in Alexander Borgia’s account book. It is only from incidental mention in letters to and from Orvieto, and from payments made, that we can find out when the work was begun, and how long it lasted.
Messrs. Ehrle and Stevenson, in their monumental work on the Borgia Apartments, show very clearly that Pintoricchio’s part only began with the second room. The private or living rooms of the Pope at that time were the second, or the Hall of Mysteries; the third, the Hall of Saints; and the fourth, or Arts and Sciences, besides the two withdrawing rooms. Vasari knew this quite well at the end of the sixteenth century. It is only with Chattard, about 1764, that the whole of the six rooms were said to have been decorated for Alexander VIII. In Vasari’s life of Pintoricchio, he says the Pope made him paint the rooms he inhabited, and the Borgia Tower; and, more clearly still, in the life of Perino del Vaga, he says the latter was painting the vault of the Sala Pontifici, by which you enter the rooms of Pope Alexander, already painted by Pintoricchio. Taking off this room, there remain five, to which he assigned three years.
Our knowledge of contracts of the time enable us to construct pretty accurately what must have been the conditions of the missing agreement. The master would have been required to use the best colours, to begin and end within certain time limits, to design all the cartoons, and to paint the faces and principal parts with his own hand. We can gather from the existing work that Pintoricchio performed his share of such a contract honestly; assistants were evidently and inevitably employed, but the homogeneous character of the whole is remarkable, and proves, not only that the painter’s supervision must have been incessant, but also that he had the power of directing and overseeing his pupils’ work, so as to keep their individuality in sufficient abeyance to his own guiding influence. That he had by this time his own workshop of helpers and skilled painters working under him we do not doubt, but I do not think that any critics who have studied the consistent character of the work, now doubt that he had the supreme direction, and that he was undisturbed by rivals. The unity of ornament, too, leads us to believe that he directed and designed all this part himself. Probably the marble work is by Andrea Bregno, who had been working with him in the Sixtine Chapel, and Santa Maria del Popolo.
Something of the beauty which greets us in these halls we owe to the mellowing hand of time; yet even when new, the effect must have been rich and glowing, brilliant and deep rather than gaudy, and all is planned to suit the subdued light of a northern aspect. The square, not very high rooms are spaced, divided, and slightly vaulted with the most consummate skill. The rich soft colours, the heavy gold, the airy outlook of landscape, the glowing background, give an effect, choice, jewelled, of an exquisite finish, of a sensuous gratification, almost without parallel. The imagination furnishes the empty chambers with all the choice objects they once contained. The priceless majolica, the gold and silver vessels, the brocaded hangings, the ivory carvings—what a background for the scenes of love and revelry once enacted here! The thrum of music, the laughter and wit and boisterous merriment, the muttered conferences, the whispered plotting, the ghastly treacheries, the dying groans. In one of these rooms, the Hall of Arts, the first husband of the young Lucrezia was murdered. In the adjoining room the Pope himself died in agonies. On these and on what other deeds of darkness and despair and triumphant villainy have these chaste and innocent conceptions of Pintoricchio looked down. It gives them a curious attraction, born of incongruity; as a writer says: “They have all the fascination of ‘fleurs du mal.’”
It was about this time that the grotesque first crept into art. Dr. Schmarsow thinks that the earliest signs may be detected in the Borgia Apartments. The early art of the Renaissance had shown a preference for the classic, inspired by the decorations on antique marbles. The objects were clear and simple, human beings, animals, keeping true to nature, ornamented with garlands, ribbons, and other accessories, fanciful, but not fantastic. The origin of the expression “grottesque,” which is first used in Pintoricchio’s contract in Siena in 1502, is explained by Benvenuto Cellini in 1571. It was taken from the objects found by students of art who explored antique monuments in caverns or grottoes. Paintings, ornamented with grotesques, were crowded with objects all complicated, twisted and adapted, masks, swans with abnormally long necks, fabulous monsters, unnatural flowers. Exuberantly as Pintoricchio afterwards uses such objects, the tendency is only seen slightly here and in the Buffalini chapel. His work in the first hall (the Hall of Mysteries) of the life of our Lord, has something of a mediæval tendency. The scenes are seven in number: “The Annunciation,” “The Nativity,” “The Adoration of the Magi,” “The Resurrection,” “The Ascension,” “The Descent of the Holy Spirit,” and “The Assumption of the Virgin.” The composition of all is of the simplest, no strong emotions are rendered, and the figures are all of that peaceful and primitive devotion suited to the ruling of the early Church, and recalling Fiorenzo and Bonfigli. Indeed, the contrast is great between the simplicity of ornament and more ambitious, scientific spirit in the Sixtine, and the return here to the conventional composition and the mediæval fondness for accessory. Both “The Annunciation” and “The Adoration of the Magi” are of the Umbro-Perugian type. Pintoricchio repeats the angel of the first scene again at Spello, with several other figures. In the radial lines of the pavement we recognise the example of Perugino in the Sixtine fresco. The whole scene in the stately halls opening out in a beautiful landscape, is full of soft dignity. The rose-pink of the angels’ robes, the peacock-blues and greens of Mary’s garments, the rose-wreath, the lilies, make a luscious combination of colour. It is the impassionate character, the childlike and unconscious spirit of all Pintoricchio’s creations that gives them such a piquancy, in contrast to their splendid setting.
Anderson photo] [Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome
THE ANNUNCIATION
Dr. Auguste Schmarsow, of all the critics, is the one who has given most careful study to these frescoes and has brought most knowledge and erudition to bear upon them. He divides a great deal of the execution among the various schools to which he thinks Pintoricchio’s assistants belonged, and his assignments, if not to be taken as actual facts, are worth considering—it being allowed that the whole is due to one designer. All critics concur in giving the figures in the “Annunciation” to the master. In the next, the “Nativity,” the Virgin and Child are also from Pintoricchio’s own hand, and many details recall the altar-piece in Santa Maria del Popolo. The “Adoration of the Magi” is attributed to a Lombard, except the boy at the right, who is by a pupil of Botticelli. We should be sorry to hold Pintoricchio immediately responsible for the ill-drawn Child and awkward hands in this fresco; and in the patterns on the dresses and the terra-cotta mouldings of the buildings we see the Lombard taste. In the “Resurrection” we have the broken tomb, the risen Saviour, and the guards in armour, set in a landscape of rocky ground and cypresses.