Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/713

PERUGINO 681 excelled for that period of art, from Pietro della Francesca. The date of this first Florentine sojourn is by no means settled ; some authorities incline to make it as early as 1470, while others, with perhaps better reason, postpone it till 1479. Pietro at this time was extremely poor, and his prospects of rising in his art, save by the exercise of incessant diligence day and night, were altogether dim ; he had no bed, but slept on a chest or trunk for many months, and, bent upon making his way, resolutely denied himself every creature-comfort. Gradually Perugino rose into notice, and in the course of some years he became e xtremely famous not only throughout all Italy but even beyond her bounds. He was one of the earliest Italian painters to practise oil- painting, in which he evinced a depth and smoothness of tint which elicited much remark ; he transcended his epoch in giving softness to form and a graceful spacious ness to landscape-distances, and in perspective he applied the novel rule of two centres of vision. The Florentine school advanced in amenity under his influence. Some of his early works were extensive frescos for the Ingesati fathers in their convent, which was destroyed not many years afterwards in the course of the siege of Florence ; he produced for them also many cartoons, which they executed with brilliant effect in stained glass. Though greedy for gain, his integrity was proof against temptation; and an amusing anecdote has survived of how the prior of the Ingesati doled out to him the costly colour of ultra marine, and how Perugino, constantly washing his brushes, obtained a surreptitious hoard of the pigment, which he finally restored to the prior to shame his stingy suspicious- ness. Another (and possibly apocryphal) anecdote, to show that he was not incapable of rising superior to all sordid considerations, is that he painted some excellent frescos for the oratory annexed to S. Maria de Bianchi and would only accept an omelette as a gratuity. A third anecdote (but it belongs to a late period of his life) is that, as he would trust no one, he was accustomed to carry his money about with him in travelling after he had received a pay ment, and on one occasion was robbed and had a narrow escape of his life ; eventually, however, the bulk of the money was recovered. A good specimen of his early style, in tempera, is the circular picture in the Louvre of the Virgin and Child enthroned between Saints. Perugino returned from Florence to Perugia, and thence, towards 1483, he went to Rome. The painting of that part of the Sixtine Chapel which is now immortalized by Michelangelo s Last Judgment was assigned to him by the pope ; he covered it with frescos of the Assumption, the Nativity, and Moses in the Bulrushes. These works were ruthlessly destroyed to make a space for his suc cessor s more colossal genius, but other works by Perugino still remain in the Sixtine Chapel, Moses and Zipporah (often attributed to Signorelli), the Baptism of Christ, and Christ giving the keys to Peter. This last work is more especially noted, and may be taken as a typical example both of Perugino s merits and of his characteristic defects, such as formal symmetry of composition, set attitudes, and affectation in the design of the extremities. Pintu- ricchio accompanied the greater Umbrian to Rome, and was made his partner, receiving a third of the profits ; he may probably have done some of the Zipporah subject. Pietro, now aged forty, must have left Rome after the completion of the Sixtine paintings in 1486, and in the autumn of that year he was in Florence. Here he figures by no means advantageously in a criminal court. In July 1487 he and another Perugian painter named Aulista di Angelo were convicted, on their own confession, of having in December waylaid with staves some one (the name does not appear) in the street near S. Pietro Maggiore. Perugino limited himself, in intention, to assault and battery, but Aulista had made up his mind for murder. The minor and more illustrious culprit was fined ten gold florins, and the major one exiled for life. The next recorded incident in his career is also not wholly honourable to Perugino, that of his undertaking but not fulfilling a contract to paint in Orvieto ; as the commission fell through we need not pursue the details. Between 1486 and 1499 Perugino resided chiefly in Florence, making one journey to Rome and several to Perugia. He had a regular shop in Florence, received a great number of commissions, with proportionate gain and fame, and continued developing his practice as an oil- painter, his system of superposed layers of colour being essentially the same as that of the Van Eycks. One of his most celebrated pictures, the Pieta in the Pitti Gallery, belongs to the year 1495. From about 1498 he became increasingly keen after money, frequently repeating his groups from picture to picture, and leaving much of his work to journeymen. In 1499 the guild of the Cambio (money-changers or bankers) of Perugia asked him to undertake the decoration of their audience-hall, and he accepted the invitation. This extensive scheme of work, which may have been finished within the year 1500, com prised the painting of the vault with the seven planets and the signs of the zodiac (Perugino doing the designs and his pupils most probably the executive work), and the representation on the walls of two sacred subjects the Nativity and Transfiguration the Eternal Father, the four Virtues of Justice, Prudence, Temperance, and Forti tude, Cato as the emblem of wisdom, and (in life-size) numerous figures of classic worthies, prophets, and sibyls. On the mid-pilaster of the hall Perugino placed his own portrait in bust-form. It is probable that Raphael, who in boyhood, towards 1496, had been placed by his uncles under the tuition of Perugino, bore a hand in the work of the vaulting ; but, besides Raphael, the master had many and distinguished scholars acting as his assistants. The Transfiguration in this series has often been spoken of as the latest work of eminent excellence produced by Peru gino, and from about 1500 he declined in a marked degree; this, however, is not to be accepted as true without some qualification, as we shall see in the sequel. It may have been about this time (though some accounts date the event a few years later) that Vannucci married a young and beautiful wife, the object of his fond affection ; he loved to see her handsomely dressed, and would often deck her out with his own hands. He was made one of the priors of Perugia in 1501. While Perugino, though by no means stationary or unprogressive as an executive artist, was working con tentedly upon the old lines, and carrying out, almost to their highest .point of actual or potential development, the ancient conceptions of subject-matter, treatment, style, and form, a mighty wave of new art flooded Florence with its rush and Italy with its rumour. Michelangelo, twenty- five years of age in 1500, following after and distancing Leonardo da Vinci, was opening men s eyes and minds to possibilities of achievement as yet unsurmised. Vannucci in Perugia heard Buonarroti bruited abroad, and was impatient to see with his own eyes what the stir was all about. In 1504 he allowed his apprentices and assistants to disperse, and he returned to Florence. It was not in the nature of things that he should simply swell the chorus of praise. Though not openly detracting, he viewed with jealousy and some grudging the advances made by Michel angelo ; and Michelangelo on his part replied, with the intolerance which pertains to superiority, to the faint praise or covert dispraise of his senior and junior in the art. On one occasion, in company, he told Perugino to XVIII. 86