Pietro Vannucci, called Perugino

by George C. Williamson

Few events in his life show the very high reputation enjoyed by the master more clearly than is shown by this commission. To be called in to decorate the very wall of the sacred little house that in the sixth century had sheltered St. Benedict and in the thirteenth century St. Francis, and which even at that period had become one of the great shrines of Christendom, was honour indeed. The "Crucifixion" somewhat closely resembled the one in the Accademia painted for the monastery of St. Jerome, but hardly anything of the artist's work now remains. The upper part of the fresco was destroyed in 1700 during the demolition of the old choir to make way for the present building, and the lower part which remains was entirely restored by Castellani in 1830. From Assisi Perugino went to Siena and painted a picture for the Vieri family for the church of San Francesco which was completed September 5th, 1510,[N] and which was burnt in 1655. One fragment only remains of this picture, a face of very considerable beauty, which belongs now to Miss Hertz, and is in her home in Rome.

Alinari photo] [St. Augustine's, Siena

THE CRUCIFIXION, 1510

In Siena, also, Perugino painted a "Crucifixion" for the Chigi altar in San Agostino, for which he was paid 200 ducats. This is still in existence, but is a stiff and formal piece, especially if compared with his earlier renderings of the same dread scene. Two features distinguish it from other crucifixions. The pelican in its piety with its three young in their nest surmounts the Cross, a piece of symbolism used nowhere else by the artist, and the floating angels carry with them double twisted ribbons instead of a single one. Orsini, at this stage, says that Perugino went to Florence, but he was soon back in Perugia (1512), where he purchased two farms and a house.

Mariotti records the transaction. The total sum was 1600 florins, but Perugino could not pay the entire sum at once, and paid down a deposit and gave over a house in Porta Santa Anna which he had received in payment for a picture, and promised to pay other sums at fixed times till he had cleared off the amount.

In this same year we find the wandering artist at the little hill town of Bettona, so difficult of access, and situate near to Assisi, and the pictures which remain in proof of his visit are extraordinary and remarkable ones.

The chief one is a votive picture commissioned by one Boto da Maraglia who had been taken prisoner by the French but released. The picture represents a gigantic figure of St. Anthony, calm and almost expressionless, and then a curious dwarfish figure of Boto, kneeling at his feet, in full armour, gazing up into the face of his patron saint to whom he renders his thanks. The other one is a Madonna, who is also of abnormal size, gathering under her ample cloak kneeling figures of San Manno and San Girolamo, together with much smaller figures of the man and his wife who commissioned the picture. These pictures are in very bad condition, but distinctly interesting, as they differ so much from Perugino's ordinary work. Still journeying around Perugia, we find our artist visiting in 1512 and in 1513 his native town of Città della Pieve.[O] How long he stayed there is not clear, nor whether he went again and again to the town or remained there for a year or two. There are two pictures at Città dated 1513, another done in 1514, and a fourth in 1517, and a fifth without date. The "Virgin and Child with four saints," St. Protasius, St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Gervasius, painted for the cathedral of St. Gervasius, is marked by that formal, and, although sweet, yet sickly sentimentality that distinguished much of Perugino's later work. It is terribly formal and stiff, and only detached parts of it, such as the faces of Our Lady, the Child, and St. Peter, are really beautiful.

It was ordered by the Prior, and is signed and dated. The other one in the Duomo, bearing the same date, is of the "Virgin and Child with four saints," and then in a chapel is one of the "Baptism," which clearly belongs to the same period and is as formal and superficial as the other two.