THE UMBRIAN SCHOOL
AT the head of the various local centres of painting which form the school of Umbria we must place Alegretto Nuzi (died 1385), whose works are very rarely met with in museums north of Italy. He inherited the best Giottesque traditions, and became the teacher of Gentile da Fabriano (1360?–1428), an early master whose influence was more far-reaching and inspiring than we can to-day trace in any detail. The Louvre has the good fortune to contain a precious little predella panel of the Presentation in the Temple (No. 1278), which is very decorative and exhibits a strongly marked appreciation of architecture. It is the only separated panel from the predella of Gentile’s large and magnificent altarpiece of the Adoration of the Magi, of 1423, which was seized by Napoleon but was returned in 1815. It is now in the Accademia at Florence.
The Miracle of St. Nicholas giving a Dowry to the Three Daughters of a Nobleman (No. 1659), which is officially classed among the unattributable works of the Florentine school, is now considered to be by Giovanni Francesco da Rimini, while the Madonna and Child (No. 1300a or 1300b) which is officially ascribed to Piero dei Franceschi, the leading painter of his generation in the school of Umbria, must, as we have seen, be given to Alessio Baldovinetti of the Florentine school.
Again, the three-panel picture (No. 1415) which is credited to Pesellino of Florence is in reality from the hand of the Umbrian artist Fiorenzo di Lorenzo (1440–1521). The collection is not rich in the works of the earliest painters of this school, but the Birth of the Virgin (No. 1525), a detached panel from a lost or unidentified altarpiece by Luca Signorelli (1441–1523), gives us some idea of the great power of this influential master, whose knowledge of composition and anatomy is best seen in his frescoes at Orvieto. Signorelli’s sense of complicated movement and crowded action mark an epoch in the art of Umbria. The Fragment of a Large Picture (No. 1527) seems to be imbued with his spirit, but the large Adoration of the Magi (No. 1526) which comes from Città di Castello, and a Madonna and Child with St. Louis of Toulouse, St. Catherine, and other Saints (No. 1528), contain none of the vigorous originality of that master from whom even Michelangelo did not disdain to borrow on occasion. Three predella panels (No. 1120) have been dismembered from a large altarpiece by Niccolò da Foligno, and were originally painted for a side altar in the Church of S. Niccolò at Foligno. In the art of this over-emotional Umbrian, what is meant for deep religious feeling is by exaggeration almost transformed into grimacing passion.
PERUGINO
Niccolò’s most illustrious contemporary in this school was Pietro Perugino (1446–1523). Over fifty of the religious pictures of this influential and accomplished master were carried off from Central Italy by Napoleon. He is well represented in this Gallery. The contemplative and deeply impressive pictures of his less mannered style are among the best pictures which Umbria has given us, but there is a tendency, notably towards the end of his career, to repeat his compositions, only altering the attitude of a single figure, and so exhibiting a marked lack of originality. His early Holy Family with St. Rose and St. Catherine (No. 1564), painted about 1491, is a little cramped; the tondo hardly provides sufficient space to contain the rather stiff figures, and the treatment is unpleasantly conventional. It also recalls the art of Fiorenzo di Lorenzo. The St. Sebastian (No. 1566a, [Plate VI.]), which is inscribed:
SAGITTÆ TVÆ INFIXÆ SVNT MICHI,
is a favourite subject with this master, who painted it at least eight times on a large scale, as well as in a miniature now lent to the National Gallery by Mr. H. Yates Thompson. The Holy Family with St. Catherine (No. 1565) is said to bear the characteristic signature:
PETRUS PERVSINUS PINXIT.
The Combat of Love and Chastity (No. 1567) was commissioned by Isabella d’Este, Duchess of Mantua, in 1505, and removed at the sack of that city in 1630 to the Château of Richelieu, where it remained down to the Revolution. The St. Paul (No. 1566) is a very late and not very attractive work. In his best pictures Perugino loved to paint a purist landscape with its buoyant spaciousness of view, but too frequently his figures are insufficiently dramatic and have a tendency towards sentimentality. A very late St. Sebastian (No. 1668a), which is on a much smaller scale than the subject of our illustration ([Plate VI.]), is officially catalogued as being by an Unknown Umbrian painter. The Apollo and Marsyas (No. 1509), which was purchased at Christie’s in 1850 for £70 by Morris Moore, with an ascription to Mantegna, was in 1883 sold to the Louvre for £8000. It long hung in the Salon Carré as a Raphael, but is now only attributed to him by the cataloguer. This gem of Umbrian art has successively been ascribed by critics to Pintoricchio, Timoteo Viti, Francesco Francia, and others, but is to-day generally regarded as a very fine example of the art of Perugino. Two pictures (No. 1573 and No. 1573a) of the Madonna and Child are by unidentifiable pupils of Perugino.