Messrs. Ehrle and Stevenson, in their monumental work on the Borgia
Apartments, show very clearly that Pintoricchio's part only began with
the second room. The private or living rooms of the Pope at that time
were the second, or the Hall of Mysteries; the third, the Hall of
Saints; and the fourth, or Arts and Sciences, besides the two
withdrawing rooms. Vasari knew this quite well at the end of the
sixteenth century. It is only with Chattard, about 1764, that the whole
of the six rooms were said to have been decorated for Alexander VIII. In
Vasari's life of Pintoricchio, he says the Pope made him paint the rooms
he inhabited, and the Borgia Tower; and, more clearly still, in the life
of Perino del Vaga, he says the latter was painting the vault of the
Sala Pontifici, by which you enter the rooms of Pope Alexander,
_already painted by Pintoricchio_. Taking off this room, there remain
five, to which he assigned three years.
Our knowledge of contracts of the time enable us to construct pretty
accurately what must have been the conditions of the missing agreement.
The master would have been required to use the best colours, to begin
and end within certain time limits, to design all the cartoons, and to
paint the faces and principal parts with his own hand. We can gather
from the existing work that Pintoricchio performed his share of such a
contract honestly; assistants were evidently and inevitably employed,
but the homogeneous character of the whole is remarkable, and proves,
not only that the painter's supervision must have been incessant, but
also that he had the power of directing and overseeing his pupils' work,
so as to keep their individuality in sufficient abeyance to his own
guiding influence. That he had by this time his own workshop of helpers
and skilled painters working under him we do not doubt, but I do not
think that any critics who have studied the consistent character of the
work, now doubt that he had the supreme direction, and that he was
undisturbed by rivals. The unity of ornament, too, leads us to believe
that he directed and designed all this part himself. Probably the marble
work is by Andrea Bregno, who had been working with him in the Sixtine
Chapel, and Santa Maria del Popolo.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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