shows, in his "Flagellation" at Urbino, how keenly he feels the charm of
placing groups in this wide, distinguished setting; but none assimilates
his teaching so fully in those early days as Fiorenzo, whose
remarkable series of small panels of the miracles of San Bernardino,
give us, as Dr. Schmarsow says, "the first step, without which
Pintoricchio is unthinkable."[16]
[16] "Pintoricchio in Rom."
The natural features of Umbrian scenery, its high-skied plains, its wide
valleys, account in a measure for the pre-eminent feeling for space
shown by its artists, and for their power to give air and atmosphere to
those lofty structures in which they love to place their personages.
These little panels, painted at Fiorenzo's finest period, are sharp and
strong, yet fine as miniatures. The figures stand well on the stage. The
point of sight is very low, at scarce a third of the whole, so that we
have an undue proportion of airy surrounding, though all is on such a
small scale. The perspective drawing shows how well-fitted Fiorenzo was
to ground his pupil accurately in this, however insufficient his study
of anatomy may have been. The drawing of the architecture is fine and
true throughout, but in the figures, even if we allow for variations in
Fiorenzo himself, we can hardly avoid seeing two different hands. They
have all the charm of his manner, a manner essentially Umbrian, while we
see a very distinct spirit, a spirit which was shared by Bonfigli, and
by such a lesser master as Boccatis da Camerino, a naïve and cheerful
tone, a direct simplicity, which is as far removed from the melancholy
which broods in the eyes of the rapt saints of Siena, as it is from the
scientific temper that ruled within sound of the Arno. Many of the
figures are childish in their desire to express emotion, and are almost
grotesque in detail, the hair is in a mop, exaggerated till it looks
like a huge bird's nest, the hands are cramped and claw-like, but here
and there we meet with graceful, well-proportioned beings, keeping their
slender grace, without the angular and unpleasing length of limb which
marks their companions. In the panel where San Bernardino raises a youth
from the dead, a child playing with a dog recalls Pintoricchio's _putti_
on the pilasters at Siena. The young man on the right in the same scene,
is supple and gracefully draped; a contrast to the wooden movements and
stiff draperies of his fellow-pages. Even better is the youth reasoning,
in a repetition of the same miracle, with his hand upon his hip and a
dark cap perched upon his rippled curls.
[Illustration:
_Alinari photo_] [_Picture Gallery, Perugia_
A MIRACLE OF SAN BERNARDINO
(By Fiorenzo di Lorenzo)]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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