288. THE VIRGIN AND CHILD, MICHAEL AND RAPHAEL.
Pietro Perugino[133] (Umbrian: 1446-1523).
Pietro Vannucci, a native of Castello della Pieve, was called Perugino, from the town of which he afterwards became a citizen. His earliest master was probably Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, and he is known to have also worked under Piero della Francesca. Afterwards he went to Florence, where, it is said, he studied with Leonardo da Vinci under the sculptor Verrocchio. There is, however, no trace of any such discipleship in his works, which, on the contrary, show an untouched development of native Umbrian art, so that Perugino becomes the typical representative of what Ruskin calls the "purist ideal." It is probable that his first visit to Florence was not paid till he was already established in independent practice. "He there remained," says Vasari, "for many months without even a bed to lie on, and miserably took his sleep upon a chest; but, turning night into day, and labouring without intermission, he devoted himself most fervently to the study of his profession." And in time he became himself a famous master, with Raphael for his pupil, and "he attained to such a height of reputation that his works were dispersed, not only through Florence and all over Italy, but in France, Spain, and other countries." He was himself too of a roving disposition, and he multiplied his engagements beyond his power of fulfilling them. In 1475 he received his first public commission at Perugia, but the frescoes then painted for the Palazzo Communale have perished. In 1480 he was employed by the Pope Sixtus IV., together with Signorelli and Botticelli, to cover the walls of the Sixtine Chapel with frescoes. Of the four allotted to Perugino (which occupied him in part for six years) three were afterwards destroyed to make room for Michael Angelo's "Last Judgment"; the fourth, the "Delivery of the Keys to St. Peter," remains. Perugino's subsequent movements are not easy to follow,[134] and we can only here allude to some of his most famous works. In 1494 he was at Venice, and in the same year painted his very beautiful altar-piece in S. Agostino at Cremona. In 1495 he contracted to paint for the monks of Cassino the noble Assumption now at Lyons. In 1496 he painted for the Cathedral of Perugia, the famous "Sposalizio," now at Caen. To the same period in his career belongs the picture now before us, painted for the Certosa of Pavia. Down to about 1493, Perugino's easel pictures were executed in tempera (see 181); he then adopted the new oil medium, which he used to such splendid effect in richness of colour. In 1499 he was at Perugia, engaged upon the beautiful frescoes in the Hall of the Bankers (Collegio del Cambio). He was afterwards in Florence, but in 1505 returned to Perugia, where in 1507 he painted the altar-piece, No. 1075 in our gallery. In his later years he erected a large studio in which several scholars were employed to execute commissions from his designs, and the works of this period show considerable inequality of execution, as well as repetition of design, and some falling off in richness of colouring. According to Vasari's gossip Perugino was very careful of his money—as one who had seen such hard times might well be; would only paint for cash down, and on all his wanderings carried his money box with him. "When it is fair weather," he used to say, "a man must build his house, that he may be under shelter when he most needs it." It was not, however, till middle life that he did literally build himself a house. At the same time he married a very beautiful girl, and is said to have had so much pleasure in seeing her wear becoming head-dresses that he would spend hours together in arranging that part of her toilet with his own hands. There is a tradition that she was the model for the angel who accompanies Tobias in our picture. The master was still painting in his 77th year, and was engaged on a fresco at Frontignano (now in this gallery, No. 1441), when he was carried off by the plague. The most famous of his pupils was Raphael; among the rest, the most accomplished were Giovanni lo Spagna (1032), and Giannicola Manni (1194).
Perugino's work is well represented in the National Gallery, and its several characteristics are pointed out under the pictures themselves (cf. especially 181 and 1075). He was, as we have said, the typical representative of the purist ideal. His technical supremacy set the seal of perfection upon pietistic art, and the masterpiece before us is unique for its combination of warmth of colour, with the expression of religious fervour. "What this artist seems to have aimed at, was to create for the soul, amid the pomps and passions of this world, a resting-place of contemplation tenanted by saintly and seraphic beings." Of his life as reflected in his work, Ruskin gives this summary: "A sound craftsman and workman to the very heart's core. A noble, gracious, and quiet labourer from youth to death,—never weary, never impatient, never untender, never untrue. Not Tintoret in power, not Raphael in flexibility, not Holbein in veracity, not Luini in love,—their gathered gifts he has, in balanced and fruitful measure, fit to be the guide, and impulse, and father of all" (Ariadne Florentina, § 72). But Perugino, like the times in which he lived, presents a study in contradictions. This idealist painted his portrait in the Sala del Cambio; it is an unsurpassed piece of realism, and the hard, unsympathetic features do not belie, but rather win credence for Vasari's tales about his sordid soul. He never deviated in his art from the pietistic path he had chosen; but according to Vasari[135] (whose statements on this point are supported by some other evidence), he was himself an unbeliever, and on his death-bed rejected the last sacraments. In his art he is essentially a quietist. He is not successful when he represents action or movement. His ideal is of quiet rapture, and sacred peace. But the criminal records of Florence prove that he was not over-scrupulous to keep his hands from violence, and in the civil courts he pursued Michael Angelo with equal indiscretion and ill-success for defamation of character. His pictures reflect the landscape, but not the fortunes, of his native country: that the quietism of Perugino "should have been fashionable in Perugia, while the Baglioni were tearing each other to pieces, and the troops of the Vitelli and the Borgia were trampling upon Umbria, is one of the most striking paradoxes of an age rich in dramatic contradictions" (Symonds's Renaissance, iii. 218).
One of the most valuable pictures in the Gallery alike for its own beauty and for its interest in the history of art. For Perugino is the final representative of the old superstitious art, just as Michael Angelo and Raphael (in his later manners) were the first representatives of the modern scientific and anatomical art; the epithet bestowed on Perugino by Michael Angelo, goffo nell' arte (dunce, or blockhead, in art), shows how trenchant the separation is between these two forms of artists. One may notice, then, in this picture as a perfect example of the earlier art: First, that everything in it is dainty and delightful, and all that it attempts is accomplished. Michael Angelo, dashing off his impetuous thoughts, left much of his work half done (see 790); Perugino worked steadily in the old ways and indeed repeated ideas with so little reflection that, according to Vasari, he was blamed for doing the same thing over and over again. But everything is finished, even to the gilding of single hairs. Notice also the beautiful painting of the fish.[136] Secondly, it is a work in the school of colour, as distinguished from the school of light and shade. "Clear, calm, placid, perpetual vision, far and near; endless perspicuity of space, unfatigued veracity of eternal light, perfectly accurate delineation of every leaf on the trees and every flower in the fields" (notice especially in the foreground the "blue flower fit for paradise" of the central compartment). "There is no darkness, no wrong. Every colour is lovely, and every space is light. The world, the universe, is divine; all sadness is a part of harmony; and all gloom a part of peace." In connection with the lovely blue in the picture (which was painted in 1494-98 for the Certosa of Pavia), one may remember the story told of an earlier picture, how the prior of the convent for which Perugino was painting doled out to him the costly colour of ultramarine, and how Perugino, by constantly washing his brushes, obtained a surreptitious hoard of the colour, which he ultimately restored to shame the prior for his suspicions. Thirdly, in its rendering of landscape, the picture is characteristic of the "purism" of older art as compared with the later "naturalism." "The religious painters impress on their landscape perfect symmetry and order, such as may seem, consistent with the spiritual nature they would represent. The trees grow straight, equally branched on each side, and of slight and feathery frame. The mountains stand up unscathed; the waters are always waveless, the skies always calm."[137] Notice also that the sentiment of the whole picture is like its landscape; there is no striving, nor crying, no convulsive action; it is all one "pure passage of intense feeling and heavenly light, holy and undefiled, glorious with the changeless passion of eternity—sanctified with shadeless peace." Notice lastly, how in this, as in many sacred compositions, "a living symmetry, the balance of harmonious opposites, is one of the profoundest sources of their power. The Madonna of Perugino in the National Gallery, with the angel Michael on one side and Raphael on the other, is as beautiful an example as you can have" (Elements of Drawing, p. 258). The subject of the right-hand compartment is Raphael and Tobias (for which see 781); that of the left-hand one is "the orderer of Christian warfare, Michael the Archangel; not Milton's 'with hostile brow and visage all inflamed'; not even Milton's in kingly treading of the hills of Paradise; not Raphael's with expanded wings and brandished spear; but Perugino's with his triple crest of traceless plume unshaken in heaven, his hand fallen on his crossleted sword, the truth-girdle binding his undinted armour; God has put his power upon him, resistless radiance is on his limbs; no lines are there of earthly strength, no trace on the divine features of earthly anger; trustful and thoughtful, fearless, but full of love, incapable except of the repose of eternal conquest, vessel and instrument of Omnipotence, filled like a cloud with the victor light, the dust of principalities and powers beneath his feet, the murmur of hell against him heard by his spiritual ear like the winding of a shell on the far-off sea-shore." He is thus armed as the orderer of Christian warfare against evil; in his other character, as lord of souls, he has the scales which hang on a tree by his side (Ariadne Florentina, pp. 40, 265, 266; On the Old Road, i. § 529; Modern Painters, vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. i. ch. x. § 4; sec. ii. ch. v. § 20.)
289. "THE NIGHT WATCH."
Gerrit Lundens (Dutch: 1622-1677).
This is a copy, on a greatly reduced scale, of the famous picture by Rembrandt (painted in 1642), now in the State-Museum at Amsterdam. It is of interest as showing the pristine condition of its great original, which in the earlier part of the eighteenth century was maltreated on all four sides, and thereby shorn of some of its figures in order to suit the dimensions of a room to which it was at that time removed. The picture had so darkened by time or neglect, that it came to be called "The Night Watch." The real subject is the march out of a company of the Amsterdam Musketeers from their Headquarters' Hall, under the command of their captain, Frans Banning Cocq, who is seen advancing in the centre and giving orders to his lieutenant. The principal figures are all portraits, and the names were written on the back of the picture. Our copy was painted for Cocq himself, and after many vicissitudes reached England at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
290. A MAN'S PORTRAIT (dated 1432).
Jan van Eyck (Early Flemish: about 1390-1440). See 186.