|
This is no place in which to describe the works of Perugino's
prime. The
world knows them and the capitals of Europe possess them, but from
the
city of Perugia, for which some of the very best were painted, they
have
been taken away by "_quel stupendo ladro_--Napoleone
Bonaparte."[88]
Perugino's fame spread like wildfire over the cities of
Italy. "This
_maestro Pietro_," says a very old chronicler, "was
distinguished
(_singolare_) in his art throughout the universal world." So
intense was
his fame and popularity, and his work in such demand, that it
was
impossible for him, for one single man, to supply all the work which
men
demanded of him. We should not therefore feel surprised at the number
of
second-rate pictures, planned by the master and carried out by
his
scholars, which have come down to us bearing his name.
From the
period of his prime, Perugino perhaps went wrong--that is to
say, he realised
his own charms, specified, docketted them, stereotyped
the smile of his
saints and set his scholars working, so to speak, on
the reproduction of the
labels he himself had painted. His personality
extended itself into a school,
where, at times, it became mere
caricature. Other stars had risen on the
horizon, great and shining;
some of them straight from the master's own
workshop, some from other
cities. There is a pitiful story told of the
jealousy of the old Umbrian
master for the growing fame of Michelangelo. It
ended in a lawsuit from
which Pietro withdrew his claims; but the tale may be
unfounded, and we
know that Vannucci praised the David when called to pass a
judgment on
it, we also know that he named one of his own children after the
Tuscan
sculptor.
But if we can recognise the later weakness of
Perugino, the men who
lived in his days and who openly declared him to be the
master of
masters never apparently recognised it. They seem to have
worshipped his
decadence as they had worshipped his dawn. They paid large
sums for the
feeble saints which rose like ghosts beneath his brush. They
desired no
better man to save them in the time of plague and bloodshed by
the
creation of a S. Sebastian which they might carry in procession, or
a
Madonna that they might kneel to. And truly to the end an
ineffable
sweetness, a religious amiability, is the undercurrent of the
master's
painting.
Pietro Vannucci died of the plague in the year 1523
at Fontignano, a
small village near Perugia, where he had been called to
paint a S.
Sebastian in the time of pestilence. He was hurried into some
desolate
grave under an oak by the wayside, and he died, as they say,
without
faith of immortality, denying to the last that Saviour, whose face
and
figure, whose Mother and surroundings, he, of all men on earth,
had
striven through life to idealize.
So writes Vasari, but on this
accusation we would pause. There may have
been some sickness in Pietro's
soul, we feel and see it in his work and
portrait; but he had lived in
terrible times and seen much evil and
striven to paint much good. The fact
that he was buried in unconsecrated
ground proves literally nothing, for an
old chronicler, describing the
wretchedness of the times, combined with the
terrors of the plague,
tells us, "that such was the state of affairs, that
the dead were paid
as little attention to in those times as in our day we
might give to
goats or sheep; and that especially in the country where no one
attended
to anything, all died, almost without exception, not like men but
almost
like beasts; and as the consecrated ground did not suffice for
burial
they put the bodies into ditches, covering them up with a very
little
earth." Furthermore, "it was prohibited to visit the sick, and to
attend
the funerals of the dead." This being the case, how was it possible
to
find the corpse of one old man in order to lay it in consecrated
ground?
Pietro's sons tried hard to find it. We read of them: of
Giambatisto,
Francesco and Michaelangelo, searching diligently but in vain
for their
father's bones, that they might lay them in the Church of
S.
Agostino.[89]
Mariotti the chronicler of Perugino, whose loving and
infinitely careful
search has soothed, if it could not obliterate Vasari's
spiteful words,
ends his notes on Perugino with the following quotation from
a Latin
poet:--
"Se pictus moreris, non moriturus
obis."
* * * * *
It was just at the
end of the period of Pietro's prime, namely, about
the years 1499 to 1507,
that he was commissioned to paint the walls of
the Cambio. It is interesting
to remember that at this time Perugino was
in correspondence with the monks
of Orvieto, who wished him to paint the
frescoes in their Duomo. He had long
dallied with his answer, he had
certain other large works on hand, but when
his fellow-citizens sent in
their request that he should undertake this very
considerable work for
them he did not hesitate; he threw over his previous
engagement, which,
as we know, was magnificently taken up by Signorelli, and
he at once set
to work upon the walls of the Cambio.
Perugino was
perhaps out of his element in this new undertaking. He had
no choice of
subjects, for they had been selected for him by the members
of the Guild, who
throughout show a most naive interest and concern in
the decoration of their
rooms. These men were determined to secure the
very best work they could;
their seats, their panels, their doors were
of the finest wood, worked by the
most skilful carpenters and artists of
the day. They were not wise in
literature themselves, so they applied to
the best scholar of their city,
Francesco Matarazzo, for instructions,
and it was he who most probably
arranged the curious mixture of classic
subjects and inscriptions which
Perugino, with a certain child-like and
ingenuous persistence, painted as he
had painted all the familiar
subjects of the Bible. For the ceiling of the
audience chamber, which
deals entirely with mythological figures, he may have
consulted certain
old illustrated missals in the Perugian archives; one of
these, a Cicero
(unhappily stolen from the library some years ago), very
probably
suggested some of the figures and beasts of the Zodiac which
decorate
the ceiling.
* * * *
*
The impression made upon one by the painting in the Cambio is very
calm
and pleasing. The whole is a harmony--a harmony of subjects sacred
and
profane such as the classic-loving minds of scholars in the days of
the
Renaissance delighted to create, and give to one of their
purely
religious artists to carry out successfully. The left wall is
covered
by two frescoes--two lines of figures--eight Romans and four
Greeks.
Behind these figures stretches the fair, calm, Umbrian landscape,
dear
to the heart of the Umbrian painter. In the sky above them are
four
female figures, Prudence and Justice, Fortitude and Temperance,
and
below them small angels hold the long inscription which is written
over
every group. Very soft and tender is Perugino's conception of
Roman
Emperors and Greek philosophers. They have the hands of women,
their
faces are sweet like the faces of saints. They look a little sad,
and
very gentle as they bend towards each other--not one of these men
could
have proved a ruler of nations. What did Perugino mean when he
painted
in the second group this visionary host of warriors? Surely he
dreamed
of some fair Umbrian girls that he had met in May along the lanes,
but
not of heroes. These youths, with their wonderful headgear and
their
long, limp bodies would have fallen as field flowers fall before
the
scythe or even a summer shower. That they are fair no one denies, and
in
the face of Cincinnatus there is a mysterious sweetness which
disarms
our criticism; but they are merely spiritual or imaginative portraits
of
the men whose names are carefully inscribed beneath them. The
opposite
wall is covered by a group of Prophets and of Sibyls--a
combination
which was not uncommon in later Christian art. To the left
Isaiah,
Moses, Daniel, David and Jeremiah, and opposite them the
Persian,
Cumaean, Lybian, Tyburtine and Delphic sibyls. Perugino crowned
this
most singular mixture of pagan and of Hebrew figures with a portrait
of
God the Father in glory. Many of the faces in this group are
very
beautiful, notably that of Daniel, which is said to be a portrait
of
young Raphael, and is a truly exquisite thing. Jeremiah is
represented
as a young and very melancholy man, and his face is said to be
a
portrait of Pinturicchio, but if this fact is true the likeness is
much
idealized.
In the two frescoes at the end of the room, namely,
the Nativity and the
Transfiguration, Pietro was in his old and dearer
element. The former of
these is a beautiful bit of his best religious work,
but it has been
terribly damaged by smoke, as the lamp of the Cambio used to
hang
beneath it.
There is some dispute as to whether Pietro worked
alone at these
frescoes. It appears almost certain that he did do so, with
the
exception, perhaps, of one of his scholars, l'Ingegno, who is said
to
have painted the face of Christ in the Transfiguration.[90] The
ceiling,
where the planets are painted in medallions, is perhaps the work of
his
school, although the drawings were entirely supplied by
Perugino.
Pinturicchio is said to have helped in the painting, and
Raphael
doubtless watched it with delight, and from it drew suggestions which
he
carried later to the Vatican. Delightful animals, dragons, and
different
birds pull the chariots of the various planets. The arabesques
are
infinitely varied, and form a study in themselves. Small boys
and
cherubs ride astride of dragons or of goats, and strange
fantastic
animals turn and twist themselves through flower stalks and bowls
of
fruits and flowers. Squirrels, peacocks, snakes, and many other
known
and unknown creatures, cover the arches like enamelled
gems.
* * * * *
It is curious to
pass from Perugino's frescoes in the audience chamber
of the Cambio to those
of his pupil Giannicola Manni in the chapel of
the same guild. Manni's work
is very rare, and indeed it is barely seen
outside Perugia.[91] He was a
scholar of Perugino, and in his earlier
years he followed in the steps of his
master, but in later life he went
to Florence and there acquired a love for
the style of Andrea del Sarto.
The influence of the two distinct schools of
painting is strongly marked
in the chapel of the Cambio, the ceiling of which
was painted early in
Manni's life, the walls after his return from Florence.
Manni is a
genial and attractive painter. He paints exactly as he
pleases,
regardless of religion or of history, and in his series of scenes
from
the life of S. John he gives us a set of luxurious human beings
leading
a very human cinque-cento life. The colour is bright, the
figures
portraits of the time. The ladies are very decolletees, fat, and
dressed
in comfortable gowns of the most beautiful stuffs and the simplest
cut.
One lady in the Nativity is particularly attractive. She wears
a
gorgeous gown of red; her fluffy yellow hair is neatly gathered in
a
net, embossed with bobs of the purest gold. S. Elizabeth, too, may
be
envied the splendour of her bed, and the looping of its heavy
damask
curtains. There is a sense of luxury, a sort of wanton abundance
which
is almost Venetian, throughout Manni's frescoes of the life of S.
John.
In the banquet scene, a dog and cat are preparing for a playful
battle
in the foreground of the picture. Had the Umbrian painter seen
some
canvasses of Veronese? Certainly he had wandered far afield from
the
early teaching which shows so clear upon the ceiling. He died in
1544,
and most of his work, which we know to have consisted chiefly
of
banners, is lost to us, lost too, the painting of the city clock
which
Mariotti records for us with such minute precision.[92]
* * * * *
On leaving the Cambio it would be well
to look in at the Magistrate's
audience chamber which opens on to the Corso
two doors further on. It is
a magnificent piece of Renaissance woodwork where
every inch is
exquisitely carved and finished. Perugia is rich in rare and
lovely
carvings, but nowhere more than in this single
hall.
CHAPTER X
_The Pinacoteca_[93]
"
...Parmi de pareilles moeurs, les ames se maintiennent
vivantes, et le
sol est tout laboure pour faire germer les arts.
Mais quel contraste
entre ces arts et ces moeurs!"
H. TAINE, "Perouse et Assise,"
_Voyage en Italie_.
There is perhaps no gallery in Europe as
single-minded--as devoted to
one set of men--as the gallery at Perugia. In
passing through its
separate rooms one feels none of that painful sense of
clash and strain
produced by a mixture of different schools, which haunts one
in so many
collections of statues or of pictures; and the most tired
and
indifferent traveller will feel something soothed and softened in
his
brain before he turns his back upon the quiet sacred pictures of
the
Umbrian masters.
In no land perhaps, and in no school of art, was
the feeling of the
painters more purely and more absolutely _religious_ than
in the land of
Umbria. The saints were painted for places where saints were
worshipped;
the Christs have the love of the Father in their faces; the Marys
are
Mothers of pity and of grace; the bishops have renounced the ways
of
earth--their faces are calm and grey beneath their mitres. And
the
Umbrian angels are crowned with roses, but they are the roses
of
Paradise, and not the flowers of earth and of her banquets. Think of
the
galleries of Venice, of Bonifazio's Dives, and the glorious women
of
Titian; think of the Roman collections, of Bologna and Guercino;
nay,
even think of the later art of Florence, and then come back to
these
calm Umbrian masters. The gap is wide; the one is full of the
passion
and splendour of earth, the other of the sentiment of
heaven.
In M. Rio's chapters on the Umbrian school (_l'Art Chretien_,
vol. ii.),
he dwells at length on the purely spiritual tendency of the
Umbrian
school, and to enforce this he points out two of its most
remarkable
characteristics; firstly he remarks that the Umbrian painters
rarely
painted portraits, and secondly, he gives an account of one of
their
chief products, namely, the painting of the _gonfalone_ or
banner.
We have seen in the history how the inhabitants of Perugia,
driven to
desperation by their own wickedness, would take fits of the
most
passionate religious revolt, and, casting aside the vanities of
the
flesh, half kill themselves with cords and stripes and
lamentations.
This excess of repentance took different forms. Sometimes, as
we know,
it resulted in an appeal to the saints through wild, mad litanies;
at
others in an appeal to Christ's mercy through art; and it was at
such
times that the Umbrian school, beginning with Bonfigli and ending
in
works like Raphael's Sistine Madonna and Baroccio's much later
designs,
painted the _gonfalone_, a style of picture which is very typical
of
Umbria, and which should be looked at with a knowledge of the
events
from which it first originated. These banners were carried about
the
city, the priests walking in front, the populace behind, a wail
and
shriek of lamentation falling on the air as the procession
passed.
Sometimes, as in the banner of Bonfigli at S. Fiorenzo, a poem
of
supplication to God would be painted, upheld by angels, on the
banner
itself, with passionate words of prayer upon it. It is difficult
to
render into English the palpitating style of the original verses, but
we
quote some passages to illustrate the sentiment which inspired
the
painting of the _gonfalone_ of S. Fiorenzo (the date of the banner
is
about 1476):
"Oh, most obstinate and wicked people--cruel,
proud, and full of
all iniquity, who hast placed thy faith and thy
desires on things
which are full of a mortal misery, I, the angel of
Heaven, am sent
unto you from God to tell you that he will put an end to
all your
wounds and weeping, your ruin and your curse, through the
mediation
of Mary.... Turn, turn your eyes, most miserable mortals, to
the
great examples of the past and present, to the utter miseries
and
heavy evils which Heaven sends to you because of all your
sins:
your homicide and your adultery, your avarice and luxury....
O,
miserable beings, the justice of heaven works not in a hurry,
but
it punishes always, even as men deserve.... Nineveh was a
city
florid and magnificent, and Babylon was likewise, but now they
are
as nothing; and Sodom and Gomorrah, behold them now--a morass
of
sulphur and of fetid waters.... Oh, therefore be grateful,
and
acknowledge the benefits and graces of Our Saviour, and let
your
souls burn hotly with the fire of faith and charity, of hope
and
faithful love.... But, and if you should again grow slothful
and
unwilling to renounce your errors, I foretell a second
judgment
upon you, and I reckon that it will prove more terrible, more
cruel
than the first...."
The _gonfalone_ on which this menacing
appeal of the angel of God is
painted is by Bonfigli, and was made at the
time of a terrible
pestilence which raged through Perugia at the end of the
fifteenth
century.
In Umbria therefore, more than in most countries,
the history of her art
should be studied side by side with the history of the
times in which it
was produced, for the one was, as it were, the spiritual
escape or
reaction from the other. The art of Umbria was perhaps only another
form
of that spirit which produced the teaching of S. Francis. The
first
pictures of Perugia are full of man's best prayers, the earliest of
them
bear his stripes, in very few can we detect his wantonness or
humour;
and when we say that the later ones are imbued with man's weakness,
or
at least his sentimentality, we make a most apparent platitude. It
is
sufficient in this place to note that whatever the final faults of
the
school, it originated in a purpose that was pure--the purpose of men
who
strove to represent the very opposite of all that fury, blood,
and
passion peculiar to the time and place in which they lived and
painted.
To most people, therefore, who once have grasped these facts,
there will
be something sad, nay, even offensive, in the Pinacoteca at
Perugia.
Why, and for whom, were these purely religious paintings torn from
their
niches in the quiet churches, and hung up, side by side, in a glare
of
light on the walls of a gallery? How pale, and how sad they look,
after
all, the saints and the Marys, the angels and the holy Child, here
on
the bare grey walls. The thing has been said a hundred times before,
but
a friend at Perugia said it to us in a way we have never forgotten.
He
was a priest, and he loved his church. We were discussing together
the
present system of local picture galleries. His eyes grew dark. "Yes,"
he
said, "it is as though they would tear a child from the breasts of
its
mother. The mother withers and dies, and the child dies too, without
her
care in the wilderness where they laid it."
* *
* * *
It is the student of art who profits by the present
arrangement, for the
pictures at Perugia are not difficult to find. With the
exception of the
Duomo and S. Pietro, most of the churches have been
ransacked, and their
canvasses and panels neatly stored in perfect order of
dates and names
on the walls of the Pinacoteca, and it is an easy matter,
even in a
quiet morning's stroll, to follow here the rise and fall of Umbrian
art.
In the limited space before us it will not be possible to give
anything
but a skeleton sketch of the school of Perugino. Larger works
contain
abundant store of facts about this particular centre of Italian art;
but
if one only shuts one's eyes and dreams of it, the three great
names
start up before one: Pietro Vannucci, Raphael, and Pinturicchio.
Close
upon these follow other names; some, and these perhaps the fairest
and
most charming, rise like the dawn behind them: Ottaviano
Nelli,
Bonfigli, and Fiorenzo di Lorenzo. The pupils follow after Manni,
Lo
Spagna, Eusebio di S. Giorgio, l'Ingegno, Sinibaldo Ibi,
Tiberio
d'Assisi and a host of others, who die at last, feeble, but not
utterly
degraded, in the works of the two Alfanis.
*
* * * *
An easy-going historian of Perugia summed up
the earliest stages of her
art in the following sentence: "I have not been
able to discover that
Perugia had any painters before the time of Bonfigli,
but even if she
had them, they will not have been worthy of mention." The
assertion was
sweeping, and later writers have taken pains to contradict it,
but for
those who have only time for a superficial and general study of
Perugian
pictures it yet holds a good deal of truth. No great original work
(with
the exception of the missal workers, in which style of art Perugia
is
very rich) is left to us from the hand of a Perugian artist before
the
time of Bonfigli, and the early history of her art may be said to
have
been a great deal that of outside influences, for from very early
times
the best and greatest masters appear, like foreign tribes before
them,
to have climbed the hill and left some subtle marks upon her
churches
and her palaces.[94]
As the School of Siena died, that of
Umbria awoke to life. Close upon
the heels of Taddeo Bartoli, those men
followed who were born to precede
the School of Perugino. Before them there
were around Perugia only
phantoms: stiff saints on panels and on parchment,
without dates, ghosts
of unattained, though dimly felt, ideals--a scattered
flock of
"primitives," left here and there on chapel walls or psalters.
Then
gradually, all through Umbria and her border lands, in a steady
circle
of glory, like the stars on a summer night, the lights arose and
burned.
At Gubbio, Camerino, Foligno, Gualdo, Fabriano, and Urbino we
trace
their steady progress through the work of men like Nelli, Piero
della
Francesca, Gentile da Fabriano, Niccolo Alunno, and many others. And
as
these stars arose great comets travelled through them--Giotto,
Fra
Angelico, Benozzo Gozzoli, Filippo Lippi, and others, till the whole
sky
was full. Then from the centre, straight from the hill of Citta
della
Pieve--there rose Pietro Perugino, and to his school came one with
the
halo of pure art upon his forehead,--Raphael Sanzio of
Urbino.
* * * * *
The following
notes on the Pinacoteca and its pictures may be of use to
anyone who requires
a few more details than a guide-book can supply.
They pretend to be nothing
like a serious criticism, for the history of
art is long and the books about
it full; in most of them the art of
Umbria is freely treated. We have gleaned
our notes about the painters
of Perugia from such sources as Vasari (who,
however, is often
prejudiced), Crowe and Cavalcaselle, and several local
works. Any
personal gossip has been drawn from the ever delightful works
of
Mariotti, whose words, if they be now and then a little antiquated,
are
as trustworthy as those of a faithful student's only can be. We
have
dealt chiefly with the work of the Umbrian painters, and indeed,
with
the exception of Fra Angelico's panels and those of some of the
Sienese
masters, there is little else to study in this small and
charming
gallery.
* * * * *
The
Umbrian School followed close upon that of Siena, and the Gallery of
Perugia
has some fine bits of Sienese work, notably some panels by
Taddeo Bartoli
(1363-1422) in Sala IV. This room has some other good
panels of early
masters--of masters who probably influenced the
Perugians, but whose names
are lost to us.[95]
ROOM I.
_Sala dei Cimelii._
The
first room in the gallery is devoted to the very earliest art of
Siena and
Umbria, and is one of those rather painful collections of
pictures which we
find in every local Italian gallery--a room of the
primitive painters--which
are, as the narrow path of art, beset with
many thorns, where only those who
passionately love the goal need try to
push the briars back and tread the
damp and pebbles. But we never
forget, though we may even dislike, the
pitiful pale figures of the
crucified Christ, and the staring wooden saints
in triptychs, for in
them is shown the strain of technical ignorance, but of
ignorance which
strives with passionate pain to get beyond itself and soar
towards the
expression of some deep emotion. This strain and impotent desire
is
amply shown in the monstrous figure of our Saviour by
Magaritone
d'Arezzo (see No. 26), which used to hang inside the chapel of
S.
Bernardino. Such as it is that figure had the seed of art in it, and
of
an art which, perhaps, had a greater power of appeal to the souls of
men
and women in pain than all the finished figures of the later
painters.
No. 28 is an interesting picture, inasmuch as the Bishop whom
it
represents holds tight to his breast a picture of the old town
of
Perugia. No. 16 is one of the earliest paintings known in Perugia. It
is
terribly damaged, and it is difficult to trace the story of the Saint
in
the battered little panels. These same panels were the first coffin
of
Beato Egidio (see p. 198). Sometime after his death a splendid tomb
was
made for the Saint, which can still be seen in the church of
the
University, and when the humbler coffin was pulled to pieces,
some
unknown local painter took the strange fancy to paint on it the
history
of the man whose bones it had first covered, together with an
accurate
portrait of his new and lovelier tomb. There are many other pictures
in
this room, among them (No. 11) an exquisite fragment of some
old
predella with two small angels on it; and one or two remains of
early
Sienese work.
_Bonfigli._
The room which follows that
devoted to the early schools, namely, the
Cappella del Bonfigli, is to a
student of history one of the most
interesting points in the whole gallery,
for here, through the frescoes
of a most childlike and delightful painter, we
live again the life of
old Perugia; and here too we stand, face to face, with
the authentic
work of a man whose celebrity formerly centred round the fact
that he
was the first master of Perugino, but who, as the years go by,
will,
doubtless, ever more and more stand on his own feet, and shine
because
of some strange, subtle and ever-living charm, that of the
individual,
which clings to all his work.
The Pinacoteca has many of
Bonfigli's works, and no one who once has
realised the fashion in which this
early Umbrian master crowned his
women and his angels will ever be able to
forget it. How thin and
exquisite the veils upon the pale, calm heads of his
Madonnas; how fair
and neat the wreaths of roses on the yellow hair of his
young angels!
Bonfigli was, indeed, a pleasant painter, and it is strange to
think
that his home relations were of a tempestuous order: "Certainly he had
a
wife," says Mariotti, "and he had her of such a sort that she caused
him
nothing but anxiety; moreover, he was in constant strife with her."
But
Bonfigli was not always calm in his painting. He could be humorous,
he
could have a touch of Carpaccio in him, as will be seen in his
frescoes
for the Magistrates' Chapel; but he could also be passionate
and
dramatic. To understand him fully one must study him in his
_gonfaloni_,
or banners. Perugia has five of these--one of S. Bernardino, now
in the
Pinacoteca, another in the sacristy of S. Francesco al Prato; another
in
S. Fiorenzo (see p. 232); the fourth in S. Maria Nuova; and the fifth
in
S. Lorenzo.[96] All have suffered from exposure and from
restoration,
but they are unique and individual forms of art. The Christ in
them is
inexorable and revengeful, Death strives with man, saints and
the
Madonna try to interfere, and sad and supplicating groups of
citizens
kneel by their city walls and pray for grace.
Nothing is
definitely known about the early life of Bonfigli. There
seems to be no
record of his birth. He was probably born about 1420, and
died about 1496.
The first authentic mention of his work is in 1454,
when he undertook a
commission from the priors and their chaplain to
paint the walls of the
Magistrates' Chapel in the Palazzo Pubblico. That
Bonfigli was well known and
very highly appreciated in his native city
before that date is evident.
Mariotti tells us that he was called in by
the citizens as one of the judges
to pronounce judgment on Agostino
Duccio's facade at S. Bernardino. It is
probable that he even had a
school of painting--that school to which Vasari
somewhat slightingly
alludes in his life of Perugino.
SALA
II.
_Cappella di Bonfigli_
(_formerly the chapel of the
Magistrates' Guild_).
Mariotti gives a long and humorous account of the
contract between
Bonfigli and the magistrates about the painting of their
chapel.
Undertaken in 1454 the work was still unfinished at the time of
the
painter's death in 1496, and Mariotti is unable to discover
any
sufficient reason for such undignified delay. "I do not easily
think
ill of anyone," he writes, "and least of all of painters, but
certainly
in those years we have no record even of any influenza raging in
the
city of Perugia." When the chapel was half painted, Fra Filippo
Lippi
was called in to judge about its excellence. He found the pictures
good,
and voted a sum of four hundred florins in payment to Bonfigli, who
once
more, and with infinite slowness, went to work upon them. Only
the
skeleton of this work remains. At the end of the last century,
Mariotti
thus bewails it: "But the pictures of Bonfigli--oh, my God--how
have
they been ravaged by the little care bestowed upon them, how
devastated
by the course of time." Half ruined by a form of restoration
which
perhaps is worse than none, ill-lighted, and without their
former
colour, the frescoes yet remain a delightful and engaging study.
They
represent the lives of the two bishops, St Louis of Toulouse, and
S.
Ercolano, patron saints of Perugia. To the right as you enter, and in
a
dark corner by the window is the Consecration of S. Louis; next to
it
the miracle of the fish performed by that Saint. This picture
is
admirably preserved. The landscape is one of those half real and
half
fantastic follies of a wise man which always charm one. Bonfigli
knew
that he must paint a town by the seashore; he painted the sea, but
he
put his own fair Umbrian city straight down upon its shores.
There
stands the church of S. Domenico with its celebrated windows, and
up
behind it, tier on tier, there rise the towers and the brown roofs
of
the city that we read about, the Perugia of the middle ages, against
a
dark blue sky. The miracle is a naive one. A merchant lost his bag
of
gold during a storm at sea. He prayed to S. Louis to reveal to him
what
had become of it. S. Louis appeared in heaven and showed that a
certain
large fish had swallowed the purse. The fish was caught, cut open,
and
inside it was the merchant's bag of gold. We see the fisherman
toiling
up from his boat with the heavy fish upon his shoulders, and then we
see
the monks cutting open the fish, and the merchant and his wife
receiving
their money. So realistically is the scene presented, that we even
see
the blood of the fish upon the bag.
The next picture has been
terribly damaged, and it is difficult to
understand the subject; but a
learned gentleman of Perugia, to whom we
are indebted for various most
ingenious suggestions, fancies that it is
simply the representation of some
miracle of healing performed by the
Saint in Rome; certainly Bonfigli has
striven to combine in his
background a marvellous mixture of Roman and
Etruscan architecture, the
arch of Constantine mingling with Porta Susanna
and the Colosseum!
The following fresco is perhaps the most delightful of
the series. It
represents the burial of the Bishop of Toulouse. Now S. Louis
is known
to have died in his father's castle of Brignolles in Provence at
the
early age of twenty-four, but all this was of very secondary
importance
to the ingenuous Bonfigli. It was sufficient for him to know that
a dead
Bishop had to be painted. He selected the architecture that he
loved
best--his own Perugian church of S. Pietro--he sliced it in half so
that
all might look inside it, and on a bier in the centre of the aisle
he
laid the corpse of a quite middle-aged Bishop. With infinite care
and
faithful precision he copied the lines of his church. The true
basilica
is here, not touched at all by decoration. There was no choir in
those
days; a dark blue sky looks in at the windows, the roof is bare with
all
its rafters showing. But the central figure is out of all
proportion.
The feet and the head of S. Louis of Toulouse almost touch the
columns
in the aisle. His robe, with the golden fleur de lis, is neatly
folded
round him, his mitre glistens in the light; his face is grey and
calm,
and full of dignity and of repose. Bonfigli had a sense of humour
and
could not refrain from a touch of caricature. It is impossible to
look
at the group of monks and prelates round S. Louis, and not to feel
at
once convinced of this. A fat and pompous Bishop, in golden cope
and
mitre, is saying the mass for the dead. His large red book is
supported
by the head of a kneeling friar, and the very thumbs of this
friar
express his disgust and discomfort. To the left of the Bishop a group
of
roaring monks take up his words and repeat them in dolorous voices.
Only
to look at their faces one knows that their litany is absolutely out
of
tune. At the head of the Saint another priest is reading in a book,
his
acolytes swing incense, one holds the Bishop's staff. The rest of
the
church is filled with quiet groups of men and women; and the
most
charming figure of the whole is that of a young man in a red gown with
a
shock of yellow curls, who kneels, lost in prayer, at the knees of
the
dead Saint, his back turned to us.
The next picture represents the
siege of Perugia by Totila. No doubt
this siege--that most memorable event in
the annals of Perugia--was
rather a chaos to the mind of Bonfigli as it is to
many people nowadays;
but the following history, taken from old chronicles,
will explain the
whole fantastic pageant. It will be remembered that Totila
besieged
Perugia in 549, and that the little town held out valiantly, but
finally
fell into the power of the Goths. During a terrible siege the Bishop
of
Perugia, S. Ercolano, attempted certain childlike and vain
subterfuges
of war, which unhappily ended in failure and in his own
martyrdom.
Ciatti, in his somewhat weariful and dreamy style, records the
events of
the siege as follows:--
[Illustration: FIRST TRANSLATION OF
THE BODY OF S. ERCOLANO
(FRESCO IN THE PINACOTECA OF
PERUGIA)]
"It is said that the saintly Bishop S. Ercolano, receiving
much
heavenly aid and holy counsels, and perhaps led by God, turned
his
soul to an act of human prudence. It happened that the city
was
reduced to extreme misery by reason of the scarcity of victuals,
so
that the citizens decided to surrender or to die fighting. S.
Ercolano counselled them to bring him any grain which should still
be
found in the granaries, and they, knowing his great sanctity,
obeyed and
brought to him, after most diligent search, one small
measure of corn.
Then the Saint took the sole surviving lamb"
(Bonfigli in his frescoes
has painted an ox) "and, to the wonder
and silent indignation of the
people, he gave it to eat of the
grain; it ate abundantly and the Bishop
then threw the lamb with
great force down from the ramparts, when, by
reason of its great
fulness and the height of its fall, the innocent
beast was at once
killed. When the captains of the enemy beheld this
thing they were
angry, saying: 'These Perugians have so much grain that
they can
give it to their beasts to eat, and so much meat that they cast
it
carelessly away, how can we, therefore, hope to subdue them
by
famine?' But it chanced that a young acolyte spoke from off
the
ramparts to some Goths and unwittingly revealed to them the
distress and the mortality reigning in the city by reason of the
want of
food; and the stratagem of S. Ercolano becoming known in
the camp, the
infuriated Goths, hot with anger, returned to the
attack and with
impetuous fury assailed the deserted walls. Greeks
and Perugians rushed
to arms, but what could they, poor
starvelings, do against the Gothic
host?"
Thus fell Perugia. Our learned author goes on to describe how
S.
Ercolano was conducted to the ramparts and after his skin had been
torn
off in strips from the neck downwards, he was beheaded and his
body
thrown into the ditch. Some faithful adherents gave it secret
burial,
and finding the body of the foolish young acolyte near by, laid it
in
the same grave. Later, Uliphus, governor of the city, allowed
the
Perugians to give their beloved pastor proper burial. To
the
astonishment of all beholders the Saint's head was found joined to
his
body, which seemed like that of a man asleep. This miracle
converted
many of the Arian Goths to the Roman faith, and "with rejoicings
and
hymns of praise the body of S. Ercolano was borne through the streets
to
the church of S. Lorenzo."
The next picture gives the burial of S.
Ercolano. It is only a fragment,
and we can hardly piece the scattered groups
together. There is a lovely
little group of ladies to the left--a set of
typical Bonfigli women with
exquisite white headgear. The curving front of
the Palazzo Pubblico upon
the Corso is painted with accurate care, the loggia
of Fortebraccio too,
is clearly seen and understood. But the picture is only
a shadow; the
part we most wish to see, namely, the north front of the
Palazzo, is
wholly obliterated, and the restoration spoils it
terribly.
In the next fresco the body of S. Ercolano is being carried
from S.
Pietro to S. Lorenzo, and Bonfigli has seized this excellent
opportunity
to paint a fresh portrait of his native city. In the foreground
the
basilica of S. Pietro with a colonnaded front and unfinished
campanile
is faithfully depicted, and behind the funeral procession (which by
the
way is moving in quite the wrong direction) the town towers up into
the
sky like a pack of yellow cards, broken only by its towers
and
campaniles.[97]
ROOMS VI. AND VII.
_Sala di Bonfigli
and Sala di Bernardino di Mariotto._
Before leaving the subject of
Bonfigli it will be well to look at some
other pieces of his work which are
painted in quite a different manner.
Amongst these is a Madonna and Child
(No. 13). It is a beautiful
specimen of the master's purely pietistic
painting.[98] Tradition says
that Fra Filippo Lippi ordered this picture. It
has suffered terribly,
for in old days it was hung in the lavatory of S.
Domenico, and as the
friars washed their hands they must have splashed the
water up against
the panels. No. 10, the Adoration of the Magi, is also by
Bonfigli. The
picture as a whole is perhaps more interesting than beautiful,
inasmuch
as it is one of the very few religious pictures of the Umbrian
School
where the portraits of living people have been introduced. Orsini
tells
us that the Madonna is a portrait of Bonfigli's sister, the Child
a
picture of his nephew, and the youngest of the three kings that of
his
brother. The loveliest point in the picture is the group of angels up
in
the roof. Bonfigli must, we think, have seen the swallows flitting
at
springtime in and out of some low breezy barn, and put their
movements
into angels' forms. The predella, too, is a perfect gem in
itself,
notably the panel of the Baptism where the wilderness is painted
dark
and brown, but the sunrise is full upon the figures of three angels
who
stand with crowns of roses on their heads and watch the scene among
the
rocks. There is an Annunciation in the same room by Bonfigli; and
it
again is chiefly charming because of the treatment of the angels.
They
come fluttering up behind a group of cypress trees, all in the flush
of
dawn. But the foreground figure is strange indeed. What did
Bonfigli
mean when he painted S. Luke and his ox, and planted them there in
the
midst of the picture so as quite to distract one's attention from
the
principal figures of the piece? In the next room (Sala VII.)
Bonfigli's
angels can be studied with ease. There are in all eight panels of
them,
and it is interesting to see how the early painter strove
between
realism and idealism in the faces. He loved his smiling angels
best;
what care he took to crown them with pink roses; what baskets too
of
roses he gave to them to carry! yet to his angels of the Passion he
gave
no roses, only the symbols of the Crucifixion, its anguish and
its
thorns.
We have lingered long over the work of a man whose figure
is such an
attractive one in the Umbrian school. Before passing on to the
work of
his contemporaries we must mention the name of another artist four
of
whose pictures are hung in the room of the Bonfigli angels:
namely,
Bernardino di Mariotto. Bernardino is an interesting figure in
the
gallery, and one is struck at first sight by the quality of his
work,
which differs from everything round it. He seems like some
strange
missing link in the history of the Umbrian and the Roman school; and
so
little is known about him that up to a quite recent date his work
was
confused with that, first of much earlier painters, and then
of
Pinturicchio. His treatment of detail: the Virgin's gown, the
garlands
of fruit and flowers, the angels' wings and the saints' dresses,
is
beautiful though his colour is cold and hard. His peculiar use of a
very
stiff baldachin made people say that he was a master of Raphael. As
a
matter of fact he lived at S. Severino in the Marches and worked
about
the years 1502 to 1521.
* * * *
*
In the same room there are two big pictures by Bartolomeo Caporali,
who
was a pupil of Perugino. His great flying angels in No. 12 are like
the
angels of Bonfigli gone mad, there is something grand in the rush
of
their wings, and whatever the faults of the somewhat
exaggerated
composition, it forces one's immediate
attention.
[Illustration: GONFALONE OF THE ANNUNCIATION BY NICCOLO
ALUNNO]
To return to the order of the earlier painters, we come to one or
two
names which are probably more familiar to most people than that
of
Bonfigli: these are Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, Boccati da Camerino and
Niccolo
Alunno. There is a fine bit of Alunno's work in Sala VII. (No 14). It
is
about the only thing of his which is now attributed to him in
Perugia.
Such a host of angels singing and playing to God in the heavens, and
a
charming garden scene round the young Virgin! She kneels very quietly
at
her desk. Neat pots of flowers stand on the marble wall behind her
and
three stiff cypress trees against the sky; round a corner of the
garden
wall two very engaging angels stand gossiping together, their
heads
thrown back, their mouths a little pouting. In the immediate
foreground
two patron saints are kneeling to introduce a group of lawyers
who
commissioned the painting of the banner.
* *
* * *
Boccati da Camerino's work is rare. There is a charming
thing of his in
Sala VI. (No. 13): a Madonna and a fascinating choir of
angels. His
largest picture (No. 16) is in the same room and represents the
same
subject. The Madonna sits enthroned under a heavy pergola of roses,
and
all around her is a stiff little choir of angels: a most delightful
and
original conception. The picture was painted for the monks of
S.
Domenico, and so the emblem of the saint, his dog, had to figure in
it.
What Boccati was about we cannot judge, but he certainly painted
an
ermine instead of a dog, and the little Christ receives the
strange
beast with delight. The predella of the picture is full of
stories
almost in the style of Carpaccio. Boccati had a rare and charming
fancy.
In his scene of the procession to Calvary, he shows how a rude
soldier
attempts to strike the fainting figure of Christ; and one of the
horses
of the guard, with ears bent back, stoops forward to bite the hand
of
him who would distress the Saviour.
ROOMS VIII. AND
IX.
_Sala di Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, Gabinetto di Fiorenzo di
Lorenzo._
We now come to Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, to whose name two rooms in
the
Pinacoteca have been dedicated. Very little is known about his life.
We
can only gather that he studied in the school of Bonfigli, and that
he
competed with Bonfigli in the painting of banners. He may have been
a
rather younger man, but he was earlier than Perugino and his
scholars,
and so he forms a sort of link between the masters and the pupils
of a
great school.
Fiorenzo may be said to have begun the school which
now is called the
school of Perugino. It was he who distinctly and for ever
broke away
from that Greek or Byzantine influence which we feel in much
of
Bonfigli's work. In his own day he was eclipsed by the greater
lights
which rose up round him, and it is only to us, who try to trace
the
school, that he is such a really important and delightful
figure.
Throughout his work one feels a great effort towards
light--towards
fresh issues. His drawing and his colour are often very
beautiful, but
there is a great difference in the style of the various works
ascribed
to him. Compare No. 53 (Sala VIII.) and its surrounding panels,
with
Nos. 30, 6, and 5. (The three latter probably all formed part of
one
large altar-piece.)
The Adoration, attributed to Fiorenzo, is a
crowded but a beautiful
composition. The Virgin, S. Joseph, and a group of
shepherds kneel in
the foreground, and exquisite flowers,
grape-hyacinths,
[Illustration: ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS BY FIORENZO DI
LORENZO]
even some fluffy heads of dandelion seed grow at their feet.
Behind them
is the stable--an Umbrian stable in an Umbrian landscape--filled
with a
host of angels. In the dim distance the shepherds feed their flocks
upon
the hills. The figures are mere sketches of some Umbrian goat-herds
whom
Fiorenzo must have met outside the Umbrian farms at dawn. Nos. 10 and
16
(in Sala IX.) are beautiful specimens of the master's later work.
Note
the hand and the crimson sleeves of the Virgin.
But if Fiorenzo
could apply himself with the religious ardour of his
school to sacred
subjects, to the Bible of his art, he could also
sometimes take a holiday and
write a fantastic and entrancing _scherzo_
on his own account. It is his
series of pictures on the life of San
Bernardino of Siena which at once
attracts us in the gallery. Here we
find one of those wonderful visions of
the past--a record of men's
manners, of their costumes and architecture, as
seen through the eyes of
some intelligent yet child-like artist.[99] To
describe the miracles is
not an easy matter. In seeking the subject one is
carried away by the
charm of the models, just as the painter was who painted
them. A company
of entrancing youths with long thin legs, their marvellous
crimson
tunics trimmed with fur, their small caps barely clinging to
their
shocks of golden curls, strut up and down the panels, but
barely
conscious of the Saint and all his patient care of them. No
3,
represents the miracle of a girl who has fallen into a well, and
whom
the Saint has saved from drowning; we see a lovely and
impassive
creature sitting upon the marble floor, her yellow hair has not
been
wetted, the small red fillet binds it gracefully; her relations and
her
lovers pray and pose all round her, but little ruffled by the memory
of
the late catastrophe. Just the same is the accident of the
mason,
treated in No. 7. His comrades stand about the wounded man,
exquisite
and undisturbed. "Ah," they seem to say, "thus and thus it
happened,
thus, maybe, he fell"; but all the time they are thinking of
their
well-set tunics and of their long and lovely legs; and who can
be
surprised at this, seeing that their _toilette_ is carried
to
perfection? No. 5 shows the capture and escape of a prisoner. It has
a
pleasant landscape in the background, a sort of park, with a lake
and
trees about it. In No. 6 the Saint appears in a cloud under a
beautiful
marble palace and heals the blindness of a fellow friar. The
doctors do
seem somewhat interested, but everything is too beautiful and
finished
for much pity or, anyhow, for pain; and as for the hair of the young
men
in this panel, it is more excellently curled than in any of the
series.
The remaining miracles are by another hand. Some pupil or imitator
of
Fiorenzo tried to finish them, but the treatment is coarser, the charm of
the first is gone. |
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