Page:Biographical catalogue of the principal Italian painters.djvu/158

 PINTURICCHIO. 127 difference between them, and Pintmic- chio, if ever with Perugino, must have left him before Raphael was placed with that painter, about 1495. Yasari says that lUiphael was placed with Pemgino by his father during his mother's life-time, which must have been before he was nine years old : he was however placed by his uncles after the death of both parents. Raphael ap- pears to have beeu called to Siena ex- pressly to assist Pinturicchio, but that he made any of the original sketches of the libraiy series, as well as some of the drawings and cartoons, is highly improbable. These frescoes, executed between 1502 and 1509, are very re- markable as being one of the earliest series of examples in which the com- mon incidents of life are represented, in a simply natural or dramatic man- ner ; there being no traces of the old symmetrical composition and religious sentimentalism of expression. Pintu- ricchio had now completely forsaken the style of Perugino, in which his earlier performances were executed. He, however, never possessed that power of execution, or judgment in composition, requisite to display the true spirit of the cinquecento, already fully developed by Michelangelo at Florence during the progress of the library frescoes. He was latterly care- less, and, like Perugino, is accused of allowing his love of gain to totally supplant his devotion to his art. This betrayed him at last into a superficial and mechanical manner. Some of his later productions, as Sir Charles East- lake has remarked {Lit, of Fine Arts, p. 194), scarcely give an idea of the powerful and touching expressions which are so striking in his earlier works. Like Perugino, in another re- spect, he trusted his works too much to his pupils. He was a great decora- tor; the vault of the choir or tribune of Santa Maria del Popolo, at Rome, painted before 1506, was perhaps the most magnificent pictorial decoration that had been at that time produced at Rome ; he was a thorough master of the ornament of the period. He executed many decorations in Rome, but few have been preserved ; his Views of Rome, Florence, Venice, and other chief cities of Italy, painted in the Vatican, are of those that have pe* rished ; he excelled in landscape. Pin- turicchio has shown himself through- out his works an original observer of Nature ; many of his incidents, in sub- ject and treatment, border on natu- ralism; not inconsistent with his character as a man of the world : he early deserted the traditional conven- tionalisms of expression. Vasari's strange story of his death through avarice is indignantly contradicted by Mariotti and others ; but the true ver- sion was not less melancholy, though more honourable to Pinturicchio — ^he was deserted by his wife Grania, during an illness, she locked him in his house alone, and there left him to starve. Works, Rome, the Appartamento Borgia, in the Vatican, frescoes painted before 1484, in conjunction with Peru- gino ; other early productions of great merit, and in his Umbrian style, are the frescoes in Santa Maria Araceli, representing scenes from the life of San Bernardo, of Siena: in Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, frescoes re- presenting the Discovery of the Gross, by St. Helena: and in the Capitol, Palazzo de' Conservatori, in the cha- pel, a Madonna and Child (recently ascribed by Passavant to L'Ingegno). Perugia, ^e Academy, the Madonna enthroned; St. Augustin; St. Jerome; &o. ; several pictures arranged toge- ther as one altar-piece (1495), com- bining (says Rumohr) the pure feel- ing of Alunno, with the superior form of Pinturicchio's period. Naples, Stucy,