Anderson photo] [Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome
GROUP OF HEADS
(A detail from the “Dispute of St. Catherine”)
The figure on the Emperor’s left, in Turkish dress, has usually been taken for Prince Djem, the younger son of the Sultan Mahommed II., but as it is on record that Djem closely resembled his father, and as we have an excellent likeness of the latter in Gentile Bellini’s famous portrait (now in Lady Layard’s possession), we are able to identify Djem in the much more striking personage, the fierce and stately prince on horseback on the extreme right. It was as a hostage that Innocent VIII. brought him to Rome in 1489. We have plenty of evidence of how “el Gran Turco” struck the fancy of the Romans. All the Chronicles of the time, the letters and diaries of Ambassadors, are full of descriptions of his dress and person, and of the gay hunting parties which the Pope used to give in his honour. Mantegna has left a graphic description of his appearance in a letter written from Rome in 1485, in which he speaks of his fierce aspect, his wonderful seat on a horse, and his turban made of “thirty thousand ells of fine linen.”
We can guess that the Turks made a great impression on Pintoricchio, for he brings them in again to his frescoes fifteen years later at Siena. The Emperor has been said to be a portrait of Cæsar Borgia; but as he was only eighteen or nineteen at the time, this seems impossible. The young man on horseback on the right, tradition names as Giovanni Sforza, who was about twenty.
Here, too, is another portrait, less splendid but as notable as any. In the corner on our left may be seen the slim form and thin dark face, sensitive and observant, of the little painter himself, and by his side a man with a shrewd, firm face, with a grand gold chain round his shoulders and holding an architect’s square in his hand. This is no doubt one of the sculptors or decorators of the rooms. It may be Bramante, or the elder San Gallo, or Andrea Bregno, that conjuror in marble.
The ceiling in this room is a marvel of richly-gilt and embossed stucco, mingled with painting. The eight large triangular spaces between the bars of framework illustrate the myth of Osiris and Isis which, with its history of the deification of the bull, appropriately symbolises the exaltation of the House of Borgia. The young King Osiris, having conquered Egypt, ploughs the land with bulls and teaches the Egyptian to plant orchards and vineyards. The peace and prosperity of his rule is crowned by his marriage with Isis. Warriors pile their useless armour and children play around their knees. In this segment one particularly delightful putto is riding astride of a swan, the original for which, in marble, had been among the recent discoveries of antiques. As the history proceeds, the wicked brother raises the Egyptians in mutiny and Isis finds the remains of her murdered husband. Isis is a graceful fantastic figure, with swathing draperies, and the cut-up hands and legs of the unfortunate Osiris are disposed about the ground with a very naïve effect. Then we have his burial, wrapped in cloth of gold—the pyramid erected to him, and his apparition deified in the form of the famous bull Apis, ending with a procession and the bull borne in triumph. The intervals are lavishly filled in with grotesques, which are here very marked in character. It is curious to note Pintoricchio’s study of the antique, the classic armour, and the mythical histories in the small tondi on the wide cross architrave—Mercury soothing Argus to sleep, and then slaying him at Jove’s command. Jove seizing Io, and obtaining possession of the cow into which her friend was transformed. The design of the principal subjects is in Pintoricchio’s style and full of fancy and invention, but the execution would seem to have been entrusted to assistants, apparently to the same hand which worked on the archers round St. Sebastian and in parts of the Susanna.
[CHAPTER VI]
THE BORGIA APARTMENTS—CASTEL SANT’ ANGELO
AS he passed through the doorway which leads into the Hall of the Arts and Sciences, Pintoricchio found above his head a narrow space to decorate, and his thoughts must have flown back to the over-door of the old Council chamber in Perugia and the fresco which years before he had watched his whilom master, Fiorenzo, place there, and perhaps had helped him to execute. Some sketch of that group must have been beside him, for we have it reproduced in this “Madonna and Child.” The dress and attitude of the Mother are almost identical, though the original is refined upon, and in technique and beauty of expression this is one of the most satisfactory of all his works. The Mother, holding an open book, in which the Child reads, is reminiscent of that earlier painting sent to Xativà, but Mary, gazing out of the picture with wide eyes full of light, and delicate, half-satirical mouth, has the individuality of a portrait. The Child is a very real little boy; He stands on a cushion, dressed in a little tunic, poring with pretty baby wisdom over His task, so natural and so busy, He adds one more to a long list of triumphs in a branch of art in which up to this time Pintoricchio had few rivals. This picture started Vasari on a fable that it was a portrait of Giulia Farnese and her child, with the Pope kneeling as donor, but there is no trace of a third person. He may have confused it with the Xativà panel.