Peculiarities of Pintoricchio's own are repeated over and over again.
The hand with outstretched finger we find no less than thirteen times.
The same heads are used. The head of the greybeard on the left, in
fresco I., is repeated nine times; the man with pointed beard, in front
on the left of fresco II., comes in as the emperor in fresco III., and
in the foreground, as a spectator, in the sixth tableau. We admire again
the way in which Pintoricchio is able to divide his assistants, to use
their various hands so that monotony is avoided, while imposing his own
style sufficiently to produce a strikingly homogeneous impression.
Instead of fighting against the amalgamated proof that Raphael had some
share in the work, we may picture to ourselves the friendship that we
have reason to think existed between the older man and the versatile and
tactful youth, whose talent for making friends with his elders never
failed him. We can imagine the deep consultation with which they must
have paced these floors, and pored over sketches and designs; and if we
wanted an assurance of Raphael's presence and of his employer's
affection, surely the number of times that a youth is painted, for whom
Raphael, to all appearance, stood as model, would supply one--not only
in the careful portrait in the scene of "St. Catherine's Canonisation,"
but in one of the bearers to the old Pope, fresco VIII., and in the
young man stepping forward, hand on hip, in fresco X., not to single out
others less conspicuously like.
In the first, third, and fifth, then, Schmarsow sees the design of
Raphael, and he thinks he also had some hand in numbers two and four. No
doubt, after these, the composition of the remaining ones is less
excellent, and there is a falling off in life and spirit.
Some of the helpers seem to come direct from Perugino's workshop. We
find the prototypes of the greybeards in the Cambio--Socrates, Pericles,
and the rest. In the execution of the "Betrothal," Steinmann sees signs
of a Lombard's hand, in the dress and hair of the maids-of-honour, and
the groups massed in the background. Sodoma was possibly working with
Pintoricchio; he was in Siena this year, and Rumohr thinks he sees his
hand in the distant figures of the crowning of the poet. Eusebio di San
Giorgio, the Raffaelesque Perugian, was helping, and possibly also
Pacchiarotto.
Born in 1405, at the little village of Corsignano, afterwards re-named
Pienza, Æneas Piccolomini early showed a keenness of intellect and an
aptitude for classic learning which induced his tutor, the great
scholar Fidelfo, to send the needy young scion of a great house out
into the world to seek his fortune, with introductions which carried him
into the service of Domenico Capranica, Bishop of Fermo, that Cardinal
whose tomb may be seen in Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. Domenico
made him his secretary, and, as he was on his way to the Council at
Basel, he took Æneas in his suite. The story told by the frescoes begins
here.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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