THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST
(A predella panel from the San Pietro (Perugia) altar-piece)
CHAPTER II
EARLY DAYS
There are three pictures, one of which is especially named by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, which seem to belong to the early days of Perugino.
Not that they should be ascribed to the Cerqueto period, or to the Sistine Chapel time, but it is probable that they were painted between 1480, when the master was in Rome, and 1491, when he produced on his second journey to the Eternal City the magnificent altar-piece now in the Villa Albani. Crowe and Cavalcaselle refer to the tondo in the Louvre, and to it we add the somewhat similar work at Verona and the "Baptism" at Vienna.
There is a certain immaturity in these three pictures, a straining after effect, a poorness in colouring, and a rigidity in the draperies, together with a niggling technique, with hard tight outlines, that was to give place so speedily to far more breadth. At the same time, thus early, if my surmise as to date is correct, can be seen the characteristics of Perugino. All three pictures are full of plein-air effect, the one at Verona especially. The group in Paris of "Madonna and Child" with two saints and two angels is a little cramped and crowded. The Verona one omits the two saints and introduces as another child St. John Baptist.
In the Vienna "Baptism," which has been repainted in places, there is a hardness in the draperies, a stiffness in the attendant figures, and an unfinished character to the landscape; but in each of the three there is sweetness, calm, and devotion, and they mark the beginning of quite a new movement in Italian art. It will be noticed that both in Paris and Verona the under draperies are regular and hard in their pleating, that the head-dresses are merely conventional and stiffly angular and that ornaments, decoration, and jewellery have received an amount of fine laborious detail work, which renders them somewhat too conspicuous, and shows that the artist had not yet realised the sense of proportion in the various parts of his pictures that distinguished him later on.
From consideration of these three pictures, remarkably interesting and thoroughly typical as they are of the new school of work just unfolding, it will be well to pass on to more definite ground and consider some dated pictures which follow in due course.
There is an amusing story in Mariotti respecting one masterpiece that should be mentioned here. The Priori of Perugia desired to have an important altar-piece for their Capella dell' Magistrato, and in the predella of the picture, or else introduced into the altar-piece itself, were to be the portraits of the worthy Priori.