Pintoricchio

by Evelyn March Phillipps

Anderson photo] [Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome
FIGURE REPRESENTING MUSIC

The two following halls, which were those by which persons who had had audience of the Pope withdrew, are alike in architecture, and quite different from the rest. Large, and much more simply decorated, with high raised window seats; the first has a ceiling painted with patterns and grotesques (which here become much more decided in style), and has a frieze of twelve half-length figures of apostles and prophets arranged in pairs, the apostles holding scrolls bearing a sentence of the Creed, the prophets’ scrolls inscribed with prophetic sayings. According to a mediæval legend, each apostle, before proceeding to evangelise the world, composed a sentence of the Creed, and to each here is assigned his traditionary verse.

The painter has used a late book of the sibyls, those interesting, legendary figures to whose traditionary sayings so much importance was attached by the early Church, and who were revived in the art of the Renaissance, with other classic myths. Twelve are given, and all the prophecies, composed by the early Church, refer to the birth of the Redeemer. The ribbon upon which the oracle is inscribed was traditionary with the painters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and Pintoricchio, like most of the Umbrian painters, was particularly attached to this decorative accessory. He uses it freely in the Belvedere, in Santa Maria del Popolo, and at Spello.

The figures in these two rooms are much restored, and the whole style is inferior and has an antiquated and archaic effect, which has been commented upon by every writer from the time of Taja. At the same time, there are certain of the sibyls, that of Delphi, and she of Europa, where we recognise Pintoricchio’s special supervision in the head-dresses, the gestures, and the peculiar tricks of drapery.

Crowe and Cavalcaselle have attributed some of this work to Peruzzi, who, however, was only a boy of thirteen at this time, but Vasari speaks of “a Volterrean named Pietro d’Andrea, who spent most of his time in Rome, where he was working at some things in the palace of Alexander Borgia.” Messer Pietro d’Andrea of Volterra was the master of Peruzzi, and there is sufficient likeness to Peruzzi’s style to give strong assurance that we have here the hand of his teacher. Schmarsow sees in part the hand of a Sienese, but whoever may have been concerned in the execution, the whole must have been sketched out by Pintoricchio, and is in harmony with the rest of the suite. In the window recesses of the “Hall of the Creed,” the decorations show no falling off in originality. Dolphins, masks, satyrs, flying loves, candelabra, and garlands are used with astonishing resource and variety. On the ceiling of the “Hall of Sibyls” are emblematical groups of the planets, with gods and goddesses driving triumphal cars, which remind us of Perugino’s rendering some years later on the ceiling of the Cambio.

Nowhere can Pintoricchio’s special merits and failings be better studied than in this long and brilliant range of rooms. In detail it is easy to discern the many shortcomings. He has little feeling for line; he has never made a study of planes and masses; his personages stand about at haphazard, and often fail to belong to each other or to the events going on near them. There is hardly a subservient figure in any one of the scenes which would be missed if it were blotted out, or which is essential to the balance of line or colour. The distant objects are often as full in tone as the foreground; nowhere does the spirit of the composition rise into the sublime. On the other hand, the painter never forgets the purpose that has brought him here. With a self-restraint and a feeling for effect which are unerring, he hits upon the exact size, and keeps his compositions strictly within the picture and at the right distance from the eye. Raphael’s splendid creations in the stanze suffer because of their vastness of conception and execution compared to the narrow and inadequate space from which we view them. We go back from them as far as we are able, feeling as if their position must be but a temporary one. We long to see them in a freer air. Their space seems to annihilate us, their thought is overwhelming and insistent.

Pintoricchio’s frescoes are a rich yet unobtrusive setting, they do not compel your attention, but only give the impression of a refined splendour of surrounding and a marvellous insight into beautiful harmony of colour. The effect of the light has been so nicely calculated that even when freshly executed, the walls would not have been over-brilliant for the brilliant scenes to which they formed a background. On the charm of single groups and figures I have already enlarged, but one other feature strikes us forcibly—i.e. the power possessed by the master to employ so many assistant hands of varying schools and to so parcel out the work, keep the individuality of each so subservient and so impress his own style and purpose, that from end to end, although we can distinguish the various hands at work, it is only faintly and doubtfully, never so as to jar upon our sense of unity. We receive no shock as we pass from room to room, the direction of one mind runs through the whole, everywhere we are aware of the vigilant and sensitive grasp of the master’s hand upon his tools, and allowing for all the shortcomings of detail, we cannot but feel that we have here an enviable monument for a painter to leave behind him.

Alexander Borgia had no time to enjoy his freshly completed apartments. Pintoricchio must have been lingering over the last touches when, in the autumn of 1494, rumours of trouble from foreign foes reached Rome.