The "Madonna" in the Museum at Naples is a full-length figure standing
on the clouds, surrounded by a mandorla of cherubs, flanked by six
angels playing musical instruments, who recall those in the Buffalini
Chapel. The group below of the apostles, St. Thomas kneeling in front,
clasping the sacred girdle, is strongly reminiscent of Perugino, as in
the background, where the favourite features of Fiorenzo have for once
been abandoned.
The "Head of a Boy" at Dresden must, I think, be an early work, when
Perugino's manner was felt in all its freshness. Though the hair is hard
and wiry, and not worthy of the rest, the _morbidezza_ and elastic
plumpness of youthful flesh are given by very subtle modelling, and the
moody, young face is treated with most delicate tonality. The landscape
and receding distance and tall slender trees are in Perugino's style.
The "Madonna and Child," in the National Gallery, I take to be a very
early work. It is dry and thin, with a hard black line outlining the
flesh, a peculiarity of which Pintoricchio is not often guilty. The
landscape is hard and dull in treatment, and the expression of both
Mother and Child is formal and precise. The figures and the Virgin's
hands are stiff. It cannot stand comparison with the beautiful group in
the Borgia Hall of Arts and Sciences, and hardly with the much more
freely handled "St. Catherine of Alexandria, with a Donor," which hangs
beside it. This last, probably painted during the early part of his
stay at Siena, judging by the glimpses of scenery and the likeness of
the St. Catherine to the maid in the fresco of the Baptistery, is good
in colour, painted with a fuller brush and more viscous medium.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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