Like most of his contemporaries Perugino outlived his fame. He was insulted by Michelangelo, criticized for repeating his figures, thrust out of the Vatican in 1508 and superseded by his former helper, Raphael. And his exquisite art in his later years shows a certain relaxation. He died of the plague in 1524 and was denied Christian burial, although in his day he had painted plague banners to protect the faithful.
The known atheism of Perugino affords a curious problem. How reconcile it with the mild and gentle religiosity of his art? Were he a modern artist, one might hold that he entered by æsthetic sympathy into experiences of religion which his rational self denied. For an atheist of the Renaissance the explanation seems too subtle. They were of tough fibre and kept their sympathy logically in hand. Mr. Berenson has offered the ingenious explanation that in his noble composition in space Perugino appealed to emotions which are so nearly akin to religion as to be readily substituted therefor. In the great spaces of Perugino the spirit finds liberation and a sense of the infinite. Such intuition of infinity one finds also in personal religion, and the two experiences are in a degree interchangeable. Æsthetically satisfactory, this explanation may fail to convince a devout person. He will want to know how the art of an avowed atheist enthralled the pious folk inhabiting the valley sanctified by the memory of St. Francis. Whatever be the explanation, the space composition of Perugino later sufficed to express Raphael’s vision of the central mystery of Christianity, of the nobility of pagan intellect and of the serene splendor of the Grecian Olympians.
Fig. 180a.> Perugino. The Deposition.—Uffizi.
Raphael Sanzio[[68]] is the finest example of the Umbrian virtue of teachableness. His course is a series of exquisitely felt admirations. His readiness to assimilate any sort of excellence was his strength, and at times his weakness, for he was not always self-critical enough to reject merits alien to his own personality. His admitted primacy rests on perfection of composition, and that perfection represented a beautiful synthesis of the methods of Perugino, Fra Bartolommeo, and Leonardo da Vinci. In dramatic power, force of draughtsmanship, and charm of color many of his contemporaries surpassed him. His, indeed, is a triumph of tact and judgment, and not of any single achievement. He seems one of the young men of the Platonic dialogues come back to earth—graciously prudent, gently effective, superior yet companionable. He approached art as his fellow Umbrian, St. Francis, approached life, with friendly confidence. He was equally at home with noble and artisan, with austere prelate and libertine humanist. Men readily gave him their loyalty and women their love.
Raphael Sanzio was born at Urbino in 1483. His father, Giovanni, a mediocre poet and painter, left him an orphan at eleven. Raphael’s first steps in painting were probably guided by Timoteo Viti, who practiced, partly under Perugino’s influence, the timidly idyllic style of the Northern Marches—Bologna and Ferrara. Such boyish efforts of Raphael as the Orleans Madonna, the Three Graces, and the Dream of a Knight, in the National Gallery show Raphael’s complete assimilation of this idyllic manner. The little picture at London in which a stripling Hercules slumbers between an attractive girlish Wisdom and a most innocent effigy of Vice—holding the flower that signifies the primrose path—shows us Raphael at seventeen and by no means precocious.
In the year 1500 he was called from Urbino to work in Perugino’s home shop at Perugia, soon rising to the position of foreman. In four years he made the most devout and complete assimilation of his master’s style. Such pictures as the Coronation of Mary, in the Vatican, and the Marriage of the Virgin, Figure [181], at Milan, would surely be reckoned as consummate Perugino’s were it not for signatures and old tradition. The Marriage of the Virgin in particular is merely a rearrangement of Perugino’s composition for the Giving of the Keys to Peter. But Raphael has eliminated unnecessary incidents and has outdone Perugino himself in sweetness and calm. The picture was finished in 1504, and that year Raphael took letters of recommendation from his first patroness, the Duchess of Urbino, to the Magistracy of Florence.
Fig. 181. Raphael. Marriage of the Virgin.—Milan.
