Private photo] [Duomo, San Severino
THE MADONNA AND CHILD, WITH ANGELS AND A DONOR
The “Madonna della Pace” wears a blue mantle lined with a rich shade of green, and a rose-red dress. She bends over the Child, who, clad in white with a grey and gold drapery, stands on a little cushion on her knee. He holds a transparent glass ball in His left hand, and with the other blesses the donor, who kneels on the right, dressed in a scarlet robe. An angel with hands crossed on the breast bends towards the Child, while another stands with folded hands behind the Mother. Behind is a spring landscape, a town, and the usual rocky archway with a cavalcade passing under it.
The face of the Madonna in this painting is indescribably soft, young, and tender (even a good photograph does not do it justice). The face and figure of the Child are full of expression; the angels are exquisite types, reminding us of Lorenzo di Credi. The Cardinal-donor is a man in the prime of life, with a firmly-drawn face, brown complexion, and strongly-marked features. The face is rendered with great care, the vein in the temple, every mark and wrinkle, the neck of one past youth, are observed, and as a portrait the head compares well with the painter’s best efforts. The colour of the panel is gay yet tender. The faces have an exquisite transparency, with melting shadows. The face of the angel in the background is entirely in luminous shade. The little landscape is delicately finished. The fine, decisive drawing, and the feeling, simple and unstrained, show Pintoricchio at his best. In retouching, the face of the donor has been thrown out against a dark ground, which somewhat impairs the effect.
The “Madonna” in the Museum at Naples is a full-length figure standing on the clouds, surrounded by a mandorla of cherubs, flanked by six angels playing musical instruments, who recall those in the Buffalini Chapel. The group below of the apostles, St. Thomas kneeling in front, clasping the sacred girdle, is strongly reminiscent of Perugino, as in the background, where the favourite features of Fiorenzo have for once been abandoned.
The “Head of a Boy” at Dresden must, I think, be an early work, when Perugino’s manner was felt in all its freshness. Though the hair is hard and wiry, and not worthy of the rest, the morbidezza and elastic plumpness of youthful flesh are given by very subtle modelling, and the moody, young face is treated with most delicate tonality. The landscape and receding distance and tall slender trees are in Perugino’s style.
The “Madonna and Child,” in the National Gallery, I take to be a very early work. It is dry and thin, with a hard black line outlining the flesh, a peculiarity of which Pintoricchio is not often guilty. The landscape is hard and dull in treatment, and the expression of both Mother and Child is formal and precise. The figures and the Virgin’s hands are stiff. It cannot stand comparison with the beautiful group in the Borgia Hall of Arts and Sciences, and hardly with the much more freely handled “St. Catherine of Alexandria, with a Donor,” which hangs beside it. This last, probably painted during the early part of his stay at Siena, judging by the glimpses of scenery and the likeness of the St. Catherine to the maid in the fresco of the Baptistery, is good in colour, painted with a fuller brush and more viscous medium.
Away from the sumptuous surroundings of the capital, back among the plains and mountains of Umbria and Tuscany, he returns to a simpler manner. The little altar-pieces at Spello are suitable to small parish churches. They have something homely in their character. The “Madonna” in the little panel in Santa Maria Maggiore has a gentle, rustic countenance, and no embroidery on her mantle. The Child is quite undraped. The Madonna in the larger panel is very beautiful, and is more akin in face and the whole treatment to the figures personating the Arts and Sciences in the Vatican, but has none of the painter’s usual richness of ornament. In San Andrea, the neighbouring church of the ex-Minorites, hangs the large altar-piece which Pintoricchio was painting in 1508 when Gentile Baglioni summoned him to return to Siena. The Madonna is raised on a throne which recalls the niches in which the Arts in the Borgia Apartments and the sibyls in the Baglioni Chapel are placed. The Child stands on her knee, clasping her neck. St. Andrew, with his cross, stands by St. Louis of Toulouse; opposite are St. Francis and St. Laurence grasping his gridiron; a little St. John sits on the step on the middle. On a carelessly-drawn wooden stool in the foreground lies the letter of Cardinal Baglioni, legibly copied; other small objects lie about—a knife and scissors, an ivory seal, a bottle of ink and a pencase—on the step by St. John. It is the only “Santa Conversazione” Pintoricchio ever painted. The figures are weak and unstructural, and we recognise the repetition of old types in the saints and angels. The little St. John is bright and attractive. The idea of his figure is borrowed from Mariotto, who, though poor in colouring and draftsmanship, was original in finding motifs, and supplied Raphael with many, as well as his immediate contemporaries.
The “Coronation” in the Vatican was painted about 1505 for the nuns of La Fratta (Umbertide). Only the upper part is believed to be by the master’s hand. Among the most beautiful of the Madonna paintings is the “Assumption,” executed during the later years at Siena for the monks of Monte Oliveto, and now at San Gemignano. The Madonna in this is an exquisite creation. She sits on high, surrounded by cherubs, with a lovely smiling landscape behind her, and is in Fiorenzo’s style. Her face is sweet and expressive, and the colour of the whole is soft, with rosy pinks and delicate greens of spring. Below kneels a Pope with his tiara on the ground, and a bishop in a white robe clasping his pastoral staff. The foreground is dark and rich, and contrasts with the clear and lovely tones beyond.
Another thoroughly satisfactory work is the little panel painted for the nuns of Campansi, and now in the Accademia at Siena. It is a small tondo, in the painter’s most naïve and charming manner. Joseph and Mary sit side by side, in a flowery meadow. He holds a barrel of wine and a loaf. She has a book on her knee, but is turning to speak to the two children—St. John in his little camel-hair garment, and the Christ-Child dressed in a white dress falling to the feet. The two children are represented arm-in-arm, carrying books and a pitcher, and are wandering away from the side of their elders. So poetic and innocent is their aspect, they recall the old legend of the little St. Teresa and her brother going out into the world to seek martyrdom. The figure of the Divine Child, with long fair hair falling round the face, and exquisitely drawn baby hands and feet, is one of the sweetest imaginable. Mary’s head is uncovered—a very rare variation with Pintoricchio. The folds of the draperies are unusually large and simple. The composition, the delicate restraint of gesture, combined with natural feeling, are very striking in this delightful little painting. Dr. Steinmann reminds us that Raphael may have seen it when he visited Siena, and it may be remotely responsible for his Madonna groups, seated in the fields, the idyllic feeling of which it certainly foreshadows.