Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/118

Rh r i N r i N Portugal anchored, after various adventures, at Socotra, and he himself was taken captive near the Straits of Babelruandeb, carried to Mocha, sold as a slave, and ran somed by the Portuguese governor of Ormuz. Returning to the Indies, he was again engaged in several expedi tions, again enslaved, again ransomed, and again captured by pirates. In 1542 he was engaged in an expedition to Calempin, near Peking, to riHe the tombs of seventeen Chinese kings. Shipwrecked and captured on the Chinese coast, he was set to work in repairing the Great Wall, whence an inroad of Tartars transported him to the siege of Peking and next to Tartary. Hence we follow him to Cochin-China, Macao, and Japan. At Ningpo his report of Japan and its wealth caused the equipment of nine ships, eight of which foundered, Pinto s ship being driven to the Lew-chew Islands. After a variety of other adven tures, Pinto returned a third time to Japan with Francis Xavier in 1548. In 1553, while at Goa on his return to Portugal with his rich fortune, he was induced to devote nearly all his wealth to the foundation of a seminary for propagating the faith in Japan. Returning to Lisbon in 1558, he spent a few years at court, but found the life very stale after his stirring adventures in the East. The first extant account of his adventures is to be found in a collection of Jesuits letters published in Italian at Venice in 1565. The full narrative, however, of his life is his own Peregrinaqdo, which was first published in quarto at Lisbon in 1614 by Francisco dc Herrera. In 1620 appeared a Spanish translation, and in 1628 at Paris a French translation by B. Figuier, followed by two other editions (1645 and 1830). There is also an English translation by H. Cogan (London, 1663 and 1692). See also Barbosa JVIachado, Bibl. Lusitana ; Fr. da Sylva, Dicionario bibliographico Portugucz ; Castelho, Litcraria Clas.iica Portuguese/,. PIXTURICCHIO (1454-1513), whose full name was BERNARDINO DI BETTI, the son of a citizen of Perugia, Benedetto or Betto di Biagio, was one of a very important group of painters who inherited the artistic traditions and developed the style of the older Perugian painters such as Bonfigli and Fiorenzo di Lorenzo. According to Vasari he was a pupil of Perugino ; and so in one sense no doubt he was, but rather as a paid assistant than as an apprentice. The strong similarity both in design and methods of execution which runs through the works of this later Perugian school, of which Perugino was the oldest member, is very striking ; paintings by Perugino, Pinturicchio, Lo Spagna, and Raphael (in his first manner) may often be mistaken one for the other. In most cases, especially in the execution of large frescos, pupils and assistants had a large share in the work, either in enlarging the master s sketch to the full-sized cartoon, in transferring the cartoon to the wall, or in painting backgrounds, drapery, and other accessories. In this way the spirit and individuality of one man could impress itself indelibly on a numerous .school of younger artists. After assisting Perugino in the execution of his frescos in the Sistine Chapel, Pinturicchio was employed by various members of the Delia Rovere family and others to decorate a whole series of chapels in the church of S. Maria del Popolo in Rome, where he appears to have worked from 1484, or earlier, to 1492 with little interrup tion. The earliest of these is an altarpiece of the Adora tion of the Shepherds, in the first chapel (from the west) on the south, built by Cardinal Domenico della Rovere ; a portrait of the cardinal is introduced as the foremost of the kneeling shepherds. In the lunettes under the vault Pinturicchio painted small scenes from the life of St Jerome. The frescos which he painted in the next chapel, that built by Card. Innocenzo Cibo, were destroyed in 1700, when the chapel was rebuilt by Card. Alderano Cibo. The third chapel on the south is that of Giov. della Rovere, duke of Sora, nephew of Sixtus IV., and brother of Giuliano, who was afterwards Pope Julius II. This contains a fine altarpiece of the Madonna enthroned between Four Saints, and on the east side a very nobly composed fresco of the Assumption of the Virgin. The vault and its lunettes are richly decorated with small pictures of the life of the Virgin, surrounded by graceful arabesques ; and the dado is covered with monochrome paintings of scenes from the lives of saints, medallions with prophets, and very graceful and powerfully drawn female figures in full length, in which the influence of Signorelli may be traced. In the fourth chapel Pinturic chio painted the Four Latin Doctors in the lunettes of the vault. Most of these frescos are considerably injured by damp, but happily have suffered little from restoration ; the heads are painted with much minuteness of finish, and the whole of the pictures depend very largely for their effect on the final touchings a secco. The last paint ings completed by Pinturicchio in this church were the frescos on the vault over the retro-choir, a very rich and well-designed piece of decorative work, with main lines arranged to suit their surroundings in a very skilful way. In the centre is an octagonal panel of the Coronation of the Virgin, and round it medallions of the Four Evangelists the spaces between them being filled up by reclining figures of the Four Sibyls. On each pendentive is a figure of one of the Four Doctors enthroned under a niched canopy. The bands which separate these pictures have elaborate arabesques on a gold ground, and the whole is painted with broad and effective touches, very telling when seen (as is necessarily the case) from a considerable distance below. No finer specimen of the decoration of a simple quadripartite vault can anywhere be seen. In 1492 Pinturicchio was summoned to Orvieto, where he painted two Prophets and two of the Doctors in the duomo. In the following year he returned to Rome, and was employed by Pope Alexander VI. (Borgia) to decorate a suite of six rooms in the Vatican, which Alexander had just built. These rooms, called after their founder the Appartamenti Borgia, now form part of the Vatican library, and five of them still retain the fine series of frescos with which they were so skilfully decorated by Pin turicchio. The upper part of the walls and vaults, not only covered with painting, but further enriched with delicate stucco work in relief, are a masterpiece of decorative design applied according to the truest principles of mural ornament, a much better model for imitation in that respect than the more celebrated Stanze of Raphael immediately over the Borgia rooms. The main subjects are (1) the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Magi, and the Resurrection ; (2) Scenes from the lives of St Catherine, St Antony, and other saints; (3) allegorical figures of Music, Arithmetic, and the like ; (4) four figures in half length, with rich arabesques ; (5) figures of the planets, the occupations of the various months, and other subjects. The sixth room was repainted by Perino del Vaga. 1 Though not without interruption, Pinturicchio, assisted by his pupils, worked in these rooms from 1492 till 1498, when they were completed. His other chief frescos in Rome, still existing in a very genuine state, are those in the Cappella Bufalini at the south-west of St Maria in Ara Cceli, probably executed from 1497 to 1500. These are well-designed compositions, noble in conception, and finished with much care and refinement. On the altar wall is a grand painting of St Bernardino of Siena between two other saints, crowned by angels ; in the upper part is a figure of Christ in a vesica-glory, surrounded by angel musicians ; on the left wall is a large fresco of the miracles done by the corpse of St Bernardino, very rich in colour, and full of very carefully painted heads, some being 1 See Guattani, Quadri nell Appart. fioryia, Rome, 1820.