Pintoricchio

by Evelyn March Phillipps

“A Sienese filling the Chair of St. Peter may well be the instrument to call a Sienese to sainthood, and that we do with holy joy.” So spoke Pius II. in pronouncing between the claims of three holy Virgins, Rosa of Viterbo, Francesca of Rome, and Catherine of Siena. The superior claims of St. Catherine have been fully acknowledged by history: her influence in healing the great schism of the Urbanists and the Clementists, her saintly life, her magnetic personality, are sufficient reasons without adding the miracles with which she was credited.

In fresco IX. the Pope is seated on the “high and well-appointed balcony,” which he had ordered should be erected in St. Peter’s, whence, after a discourse on her virtues, he might proceed to her solemn canonisation. The Cardinals are gathered round, the corpse of the saint lies at his feet, clad in the black and white of the Dominican order, her book upon her breast, and the lilies, which are her attribute, in her folded hands. Below stand a crowd of spectators bearing candles. In front is a long row of persons, said to be portraits. The first on the left we should guess to be Raphael, even without the traditional confirmation. Next him is Pintoricchio himself. The others have been variously named Andrea del Sarto, Fra Bartolommeo, etc. Steinmann suggests, with more probability, that one is intended for Eusebio di San Giorgio and another for Bembo Romano, who were both working as assistants, especially as the initials of the last are to be discerned on several of the pilasters among the decorations. The composition in this scene is rather disjointed. The two halves do not seem to belong to each other, and it is curious to note the difference between the conventional arrangement of the groups in the background and the characteristic forms and much more structural figures which the painter has evidently drawn from the life. The effigy of St. Catherine is taken from her monument in Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. The Dominicans and Augustinians are prominent, as it was of their order that the saint was so great an ornament.

Pope Pius was one of the few Italians of that day in whom a great love for nature declared itself. Campana tells us of his visits to beautiful places, of his landscape gardening and planting, of his fondness for distant views, and for taking his food under the trees on some hill-side. It pleased him to chat with the peasants, to joke with his friends with “free and festive converse passing into moderate jest.” He loved to build and adorn in his native city, and for a time he seemed to be only a man of cultivated and artistic life and busy pleasures. But he had not forgotten his crusading enthusiasm, and as the news travelled to Rome of the repeated victories of the Turks, of the loss of Morea, Rhodes, Cyprus, and of the Moslem advance on every side, he laid before his Cardinals his resolve to take up a holy war, counting upon the Christian princes of Europe rallying to his support. He mediated between the different quarrelsome Powers, and signed a league by which he was to meet the Venetians and an army of the Duke of Burgundy at Ancona; but the powers were half-hearted, only a small part of the promised forces arrived, and Ancona seems to have been a scene of rioting and mismanagement.

Alinari photo] [Library, Siena
ÆNEAS PICCOLOMINI ELECTED POPE UNDER THE NAME OF PIUS II.

On June 18, 1464, the Pope, “an aged man with head of snow and trembling limbs,” raised aloft the Cross at the altar of St. Peter’s, and vowing himself to the service of Christendom, set forth for Ancona. “Farewell, Rome,” he cried, as his barge passed down the Tiber, “living thou shalt never see me more.” He was very ill with fever, but the high spirit that had helped him all through life, did not forsake him. The weather was broiling hot, and the Pope suffered greatly on the journey. He was a month reaching Ancona, and had the added discouragement of meeting bands of deserting crusaders on the way. No ships had arrived from Venice, and when at last they appeared, the soldiers they were to embark had nearly all melted away. Pius realised at length that the undertaking had come to naught. Ill, disappointed, heartsick, he remained at Ancona, and when the Venetian fleet appeared, after long delay, he could just bear to be lifted to a window to see the long-watched-for sails.

The Doge, who accompanied the fleet, would not at first believe in the reality of the Pope’s illness, and sent his physician to see if he were not feigning in order to escape the necessity of setting forth, but the end was near. It was at sunset on the 12th of August that the Venetian ships entered the harbour; at sunset on the 14th the Pope passed away. By his death he escaped the misery of failure; the attempt came to a natural end, and Pius was surrounded with a halo of martyrdom and heroism—not all undeserved, for, unsuccessful as he was, he yet was the only potentate who made any effort to stem the power of the infidel, and his unsupported struggle and baffled aspirations form a pathetic close to his active and successful life.

In the fresco there is no hint of the sad and wasted moments. Pintoricchio’s part was to glorify and dignify the memory of the Pope, and to please the house of Piccolomini. The Pope is raised on high and borne forward by his followers. In front, dressed in gold brocade, kneels Christoforo Morea, the Doge of Venice. On the opposite side kneels a Turk, and another fierce-looking Oriental stands behind him. These may be recollections of Djem and his followers, whom Pintoricchio had already painted in the Borgia rooms. Behind lie the town and harbour of Ancona, with the Venetian fleet anchored in the bay.

There only remained for Pintoricchio to leave a memorial of the coronation of the second Pope of the House of Piccolomini, and this is placed over the door of the Library. It is something like the “Canonisation of St. Catherine,” in the way in which it is divided into two parts. The perspective is not well managed. The Pope and the two Cardinals who assist him to place the mitre on his head, have the effect of a picture background to the busy scene below, and the long rows of white-mitred bishops give a very inartistic impression. Below them is a crowd of spectators, of all ages and both sexes—the whole confused and not well drawn, and there is an unfortunate lack of proportion between the different figures.