Soon after returning from Prato, where he had gone to help Fra Filippo Lippi with the frescoes in the Cathedral, he was immediately employed by Piero il Gottoso, who with his wife, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, recognized the genius and peculiar charm of the young painter, and took him into the Casa Medici almost like a son. Botticelli was at this time about twenty-one, only five years older than Lorenzo, the eldest son. Consequently, Botticelli was on the most intimate terms with Lorenzo and Giuliano.

All the pictures of this period except Fortitude were painted for Piero, who bestowed large rewards on the painter. The Madonna of the Magnificat, one of his most beautiful pictures (now in the Uffizi) was painted in 1465 (when Lorenzo and Giuliano were about sixteen and twelve); and it must have been done especially to please Lucrezia Tornabuoni, for her two sons are represented as Angels kneeling before the Madonna and holding the inkstand and the book. Giuliano is the one facing us with the conspicuous lock of hair on his forehead, while Lorenzo, of darker complexion, is in profile and in full light.

The Adoration of the Magi, painted in 1467 for Sta. Maria Novella (now in the Uffizi) is also a Medici family group surrounded by their protégés in art and letters. Cosimo, “Pater Patriæ” (then dead), is kneeling before the Holy Child; Giovanni, brother of Piero il Gottoso (then dead), stands at the left in a red and black costume; Piero il Gottoso is kneeling in the centre with back to the spectator; Giuliano, in a robe of white and gold, is kneeling at the latter’s right and Lorenzo, aged seventeen, stands at his left, holding a sword. The last figure, standing on the right, is Botticelli himself. Botticelli’s portrait of Lucrezia Tornabuoni is in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin.

When Lorenzo, destined to become known as the “Magnificent,” became, on the death of his father, head of the Medici and ruler of Florence, he continued the Medici patronage to Botticelli.

“It was a period when the exuberant vitality of the Renaissance was at its height; and the first nine years of his rule, when he was from twenty to twenty-nine and his brother, Giuliano, from sixteen to twenty-five, was a time in Florence of constant festivities of music, art, and poetry, of joy and laughter and all the bright side of life. It was the fashion of the day to import into all amusements an imitation of the Classic times of ancient Greece, and the Florence of that time appears set before us as a city ‘with youth at the prow and pleasure at the helm’ and full of all the life, joy, and pleasure of the old pagan ideal of Greece set in a Fifteenth Century dress. Besides all his duties in regard to State affairs and labors in the founding of institutions to advance Learning, not to mention his own literary work, Lorenzo with his brother led these festivities organizing pageants and other spectacles of the most costly description (permeated with classical learning and poetical allusions) for the popular amusement.”[8]

These entertainments took the form of masques, tableaux, and tournaments. Young Lorenzo, too, gathered at his villa in Fiesole and even more particularly in that of Careggi the literati of the day and read classical authors with these scholars, particularly commemorating once a year the birthday of Plato. In 1469 Lorenzo held a magnificent tournament for his own glorification and in 1475 an even more elaborate one in honor of Giuliano in the Piazza Sta. Croce, with the beautiful Simonetta Cattaneo, who had lately been married at the age of sixteen, to Marco Vespucci, as the Queen of Beauty. Giuliano, now just twenty-two, wore a suit of silver armor and Verrocchio designed his helmet, and Lorenzo’s also.

Botticelli, of course, witnessed this tournament and did for it in painting what Politian did in his poem, La Giostra di Giuliano de’ Medici. The Primavera or Return of Spring (now in the Accademia, Florence), the Birth of Venus (in the Uffizi) and Mars and Venus (in the National Gallery, London), were all three painted for Lorenzo. All the elaborate imagery of Politian’s verse is reproduced in Botticelli’s painting representing the Birth of Venus in allusion to the Queen of Beauty, Simonetta, of Giuliano’s Tournament. In the second picture, Mars and Venus, Botticelli again follows Politian’s poem.

“And then having devoted one picture to the tournament’s Queen of Beauty, and one to the victor in its mimic warfare, Botticelli makes his third picture (the most important of the three) relate to Lorenzo and his part in all this, gathering up in one view the whole subject of these pastimes. This Botticelli does with great talent and in a manner all his own. He takes for his text the celebrated standard which had been borne in front of Lorenzo at both his and Giuliano’s tournaments, with its motto of Le temps revient, its device of the bay-tree, which had appeared dead, again putting forth its leaves, and its allusion to the new era of youth and joy which Lorenzo had inaugurated, and had likened to the Return of Spring after the gloomy months of winter. Making the leading thought of his picture the theme on Lorenzo’s standard, Botticelli paints for him the Return of Spring (the Primavera), perhaps the most widely admired of all Botticelli’s pictures.

“And so Botticelli depicts for us a scene of light-hearted, youthful joy, representing the return of spring, and by his great talent contrives that the entire picture shall speak of Lorenzo and breathe the very spirit of the poems in which the latter had sung of the joys of May-time in Tuscany. Shielded from rough winds and scorching sun by a grove of orange trees, backed by the ever-present laurel (always representing Lorenzo from the play on the Latin form of his name, Laurentinus), Queen Venus (Simonetta) stands presiding over the return of spring to Tuscany; the Graces dance before her; from out a laurel grove at her side the three spring months, March, April and May (or it may be Zephyr, Fertility and Flora), come bringing flowers of every hue; Mercury (Giuliano) scatters the clouds of winter; and the little blind God of Love aims his arrows recklessly around.

“These pictures relating to Giuliano’s tournament could not have been painted until some time afterwards, as in any case they could not have been so until Politian’s poem had appeared; and they may have been executed at any time during Lorenzo’s life. If painted, as is most probable, subsequently to Giuliano’s death in 1578, they would remind Lorenzo of a time of bygone joys; and would be all the more prized by him on that account.”[9]

A few months after Giuliano’s grand tournament the beautiful Simonetta was lying dead and three years later Giuliano was foully murdered, victim of the Pazzi conspiracy.

In 1481 Botticelli was sent for by Pope Sixtus to assist Perugino and Ghirlandaio in painting frescoes in the newly erected Sistine Chapel; and when this work was completed Botticelli returned to Florence with an added lustre to his name. It was the fashionable thing for wealthy owners of villas to have frescoes painted in these country-houses; and among many orders that Botticelli filled was an important series of frescoes for Lorenzo Tornabuoni in the villa of the Tornabuoni family (now Villa Lemmi) at Rifredi representing scenes in reference to the marriage of Lorenzo Tornabuoni and Giovanna degli Albizzi in 1486 (see page 68). These frescoes, recently discovered under whitewash, are now in the Louvre.

The death of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the banishment of the Medici, and the rule of Savonarola changed Botticelli’s life and his style of painting. In this third period the painter of nymphs and goddesses paints his charming and wistful Madonnas with many suggestions of Venus and Simonetta and the grace and loveliness of the pagan world.

To the last period, when Botticelli had emerged from the Savonarola influence, the great painter produced Calumny (in the Uffizi) and the Nativity (in the National Gallery, London); and with these two works the career of Botticelli ends.

The theory that the Birth of Venus, Mars and Venus and the Primavera were painted for Lorenzo di Pier Francesco has been thoroughly examined and disproved by Col. G. F. Young in his splendid history of The Medici.

PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN.

Standing behind a balustrade and looking wistfully toward the observer, this handsome young Florentine appears at half-length with his head inclined towards the left.

How we should like to penetrate his secret and help him away from the melancholy mood that has overwhelmed him!

Although we see that he is a dreamer (and most probably a lute-player as his hands might seem to indicate), something has touched him very deeply—far too deeply to be classed as a momentary sorrow. We should also like to know his identity. It is unlikely that it will ever be revealed. But of one thing we can be well assured,—he is an aristocrat and a young gentleman of wealth, for he has all the air of savoir faire and sureness of his position. We might make a guess that he is one of the Medici family. Could it be Giuliano? Look again at the Madonna of the Magnificat, at Giuliano immediately below the bending Angel! The resemblance is quite surprising and grows stronger as we study the two faces, only in the Madonna of the Magnificat Giuliano is younger and is seen with the characteristic lock on his forehead.

His costume in this portrait shows up well from the black background: the coat is purplish brown edged with fur with white puffs at the shoulders; and a red cap contrasts well with his light-yellow hair.

This picture, a tempera painting on panel (15¾ × 11¾), was long in the Collection of Baron Arthur de Schickler in Martinvast, Normandy, where it was attributed to Masaccio.

“There can be no question,” Berenson thinks, “that this portrait is Botticelli’s own handiwork. The glamor it cast when I first saw it frightened me into doubts that were dispelled directly I could study the painting at my leisure. There is no one, using this formula and technique, but Sandro himself who has the sinuous line, the inevitable contours, the structural articulation, the firmness, convincingness, and delicacy of modelling this work possesses; nobody else who could produce a rhythm so subtly vibrant, or could give this limpid, radiant, and ethereal coloring.

“True, it is more Botticellian than any other Botticelli in existence. He must have uttered this completest note of his own music just before he was seized by the Savonarolian madness, from which he never recovered, just at the moment when he was most peculiarly and poignantly, and, if I may say so, most extravagantly, himself. The isolation of this head, too, exaggerates the impression. Perhaps if we found it as an Angel in a Magnificat, or a Madonna with the Pomegranate, in a Tobias or some Allegory, the other figures, the landscape and all the accessories would prevent our attention from concentrating on what is almost uncannily characteristic of the master’s style.”

Berenson also notes the important hand, which, by the way, is especially lighted as if to draw our attention to it most particularly.

“Perhaps the most interesting thing about this portrait,” he observes, “is the manifest competition of the hand with the face. The hand is studied just as carefully, drawn, and modelled with as much intention, as the face itself. Its action reveals the automatic nervous tension of an overstrung physique that the conscious mind, controlling the expression, tries to keep in order. It thus becomes, in a sense, the most important clue to understanding the character. If you think it away, the expression, of course, remains, but what makes it comprehensible disappears.”

It is this peculiar intelligence and sensitiveness of the hand that makes me suspect the musician.

MADONNA AND CHILD.

This picture is the latest Botticelli to have been brought to this country for it arrived only in May, 1928. It was painted in Botticelli’s early period, about 1470 or 1472. The Holy Child is handsome, although robust, and His embrace of the Madonna is touchingly affectionate and human. In this picture the Madonna would seem to have had a vision of the coming tragedy and she is not yet resigned. She loves her Child too well. That her eyes are full of tears we can feel in those heavily drooping lids. Her face is full of pain. But even in her suffering and quiet anguish this Madonna is beautiful and graceful; and we cannot fail to see in her face some little resemblance to Botticelli’s Venus in the Primavera and Venus in her scallop-shell borne over the waves in the early morning in the Birth of Venus.

In this picture the Holy Child seems to have little or no consciousness of His Divinity. The Mother here is the enlightened one.

The picture is tempera on panel (35¾ × 23¼ inches) and came into possession of M. Féral in Paris in 1907. It has been accepted by Bode and Jashiro as a genuine and an early Botticelli.

The Madonna’s robe is deep blue with a lining of dull green, which shows at the left wrist and slightly down the front and on the left shoulder a star is embroidered. She wears a closely folded diaphanous veil and a red scarf, one end of which is gracefully thrown around the Holy Child. The sleeve of the dress has a band of golden embroidery at the wrist.

The cruciform nimbus of the Holy Child foretells His destiny. The nimbus of the Virgin is plain. The Angel wears a tunic of deep cream white ornamented with gold on the sleeves and a black band ornamented with gold at the throat. On the parapet stands a vase apparently of alabaster containing myrtle leaves and white star-shaped flowers, probably jasmine (see page 25). Through the open arch we see a gentle landscape, with a river winding around distant hills.

GIOVANNA TORNABUONI.

With this picture, which is considered “one of the finest Italian portraits in existence,” we step back into the period of the Renaissance and into the very presence of one of the most gifted and celebrated of the younger women of the Fifteenth Century.

“Art coulds’t thou but portray character and the mind, then there would be no picture in the whole world more beautiful than this.”

Such is the translation of the legend inscribed in capital letters on the cartel:

with the date MCCCCLXXXVIII.

The charms of Giovanna degli Albizzi, who was married to Lorenzo Tornabuoni in 1486, were sung by all the poets of Florence. Giovanna came of the noted Albizzi family, famous for wealth and rank and for leading the party of Nobles (Grandi) against the Medici, whom they considered upstarts and enemies of the aristocratic faction in Florence. By a former marriage, however, the Albizzi had become connected with the Medici, for the wife of Piero de’ Medici (il Gottoso) was Lucrezia Tornabuoni, one of the most accomplished women of the age and whose portrait by Botticelli hangs to-day in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin. Giovanna’s husband, Lorenzo Tornabuoni (Lucrezia Tornabuoni’s nephew), was, therefore, the first cousin of Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici.

Subsequent to the ownership by the Tornabuoni and Pandolfini families, the portrait represented here passed to a private Collection in Paris and thence to the late Mr. Henry Willett of Brighton, England; to the famous Collection of Mr. Rodolphe Kann of Paris and, finally, to that of Mr. J. P. Morgan.

The picture is painted on a wooden panel (29¾ × 19½ inches).

Standing in profile to the left and against an architectural background, the lady appears at half-length. She wears a rich dress of gold brocade of a handsome and decorative pattern with square neck, the sleeves of a different material, dark-red in color and having yellow diamond-shaped compartments bearing a floral design in the centre. A handsome pendant, consisting of a ruby with three pearls, hangs from a fine black silk cord around her neck. Her hair falls in light, wavy tresses over her temples and covers her ears. In the recess at the back is placed a cluster of precious stones. On the right is a Book of Hours, and above is looped a necklace of coral beads. All of these things undoubtedly have some particular and sentimental association for Giovanna. Giovanna died the same year this portrait was painted; in this year her father-in-law, Giovanni Tornabuoni, also uncle of Lorenzo de’ Medici, commissioned Ghirlandaio to decorate the walls of the choir of Sta. Maria Novella with the Lives of John the Baptist and the Virgin; and here again the portrait of Giovanna degli Albizzi appears. Let us turn to Mrs. Cartwright for a description of this remarkable series of frescoes:

“These twenty-one subjects have been much injured by damp and restoration and the hand of inferior assistants is plainly seen in many of the best preserved portions. But as a splendid illustration of Florentine life the whole series is of rare interest. On the one hand we have the public and official life of the Tornabuoni, their stately banquets and processions; on the other, we catch a glimpse of their private and domestic history. In the guests seated at Herod’s Feast, in the crowds who throng the temple court, we recognize the Tornabuoni and their kinsmen, the partners of the Medici bank, Gianfrancesco Ridolfi, Roderigo Sassetti, and Andrea de’ Medici. On one side we have a group of famous humanists—Angelo Poliziano, Marsilio Ficino, Cristoforo Landino, and Lorenzo’s tutor, Gentile de’ Becchi; on the other, we see the painter with his aged father and his brother, David, and brother-in-law, Sebastiano Mainardi, the assistants who helped in the decoration of the choir. Giovanna degli Albizzi, the fair maiden who on the 16th of June, 1486, became the bride of Lorenzo Tornabuoni, is here in her stiff brocades and rich jewels with her young sister-in-law, Lodovica, and many noble dames on their way to visit the mother and new-born babe. These frescoes, which were finally completed in 1490, filled the Tornabuoni family with delight and wonder, and Ghirlandaio was next employed to paint the chapel of their villa near Fiesole, which was unfortunately destroyed by floods in the next century.”

As in the case of so many Italian painters, the name by which Ghirlandaio is known is only a nickname: it means “Garland-maker,” and was given to him because his first reputation was derived from the beautiful gold and silver garlands and wreaths he made for the wealthy ladies of fashion. Ghirlandaio, son of Tommaso Bigordi, a silk merchant of Florence, was born in that city in 1449. He began his life as apprentice to a goldsmith—as so many superlative painters have done—and early showed talent for drawing and sketching. Before long he left the goldsmith and entered the studio of Alesso Baldovinetti (see page 48); and he undoubtedly owed much to this painter in his fondness for decorative effects. Ghirlandaio was tremendously industrious and always worked with the best artists of his time. At San Gimigniano in 1475 he worked with Pier Francesco Fiorentino and he assisted Botticelli in the Sistine Chapel in 1481. His own independent work was stupendous. Ghirlandaio devoted himself almost exclusively to sacred subjects and his frescoes are practically scenes of the Florentine world he knew so well. Whether he painted scenes from the life of St. Francis, or of the Virgin, or Herod, or St. Zenobius, the characters represented are members of the Medici, the Tornabuoni, the Sassetti, the Albizzi, and other important Florentine families. In fact, his attention to details and the careful way he rendered them, show that he had some knowledge of contemporary Flemish paintings; and consequently Ghirlandaio is regarded as chief of the Florentine realists. However, Ghirlandaio ranked in his day with Botticelli and Filippino Lippi, and he enjoyed the patronage and friendship of the Medici. Ghirlandaio’s most important frescoes are those in Sta. Maria Novella representing Lives of the Virgin and John the Baptist, commissioned by Giovanni Tornabuoni, described above, and those in Santa Trinità depicting the Life of St. Francis, ordered by Francesco Sassetti described on page 72.

Ghirlandaio died in 1494 of the Plague, comparatively young, but having accomplished a vast amount of work and having trained a number of painters, the most important of whom was Michelangelo. Ghirlandaio’s son, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio (1483–1561), became a painter and was an intimate friend of Raphael.

FRANCESCO SASSETTI AND HIS SON TEODORO.

Francesco Sassetti, a wealthy banker and Lorenzo de’ Medici’s agent at Lyons, is shown here slightly under life-size, wearing a purple skull cap and a red robe lined with fur and held at the waist by a black cord, from which hangs a pouch, or purse. His right hand rests upon the arm of the chair in which he is seated. His eyes look downward upon his son, who stands at his left, in profile, gazing upward into his father’s face. His hands are clasped and he is wearing a costume of silvery grey brocade trimmed with white fur, undersleeves of dark-green and slashed, and a scarlet cap. Through the window we have an interesting view of an inlet of the sea (or a large river) with mountains and buildings. On the top of the window-frame there is an inscription: “Franciscos Saxettvs Theodorus QVE.” The picture is an oil painting on panel (29½ × 20½ inches) and is supposed to have been executed in 1487–1489. Francesco Sassetti was born about 1420 and died in 1491. Teodoro was born on March 11, 1479, and is seen here at about the age of eight or nine, which fixes the date of the picture. It is interesting to note that Teodoro Sassetti was the grandfather of Filippo Sassetti, an early traveller in India (see Marencci, Lettere di Filippo Sassetta, Firenze, 1855).

This picture comes from the Benson Collection and was formerly owned by Mr. William Graham. Francesco Sassetti also appears in the frescoes depicting the Life of St. Francis, which Ghirlandaio painted in the Sassetti Chapel in the Trinità in Florence. Ghirlandaio introduced into this series other members of the Sassetti family, as well as many of his illustrious contemporaries and friends, including Lorenzo de’ Medici, Pope Honorius, Maso degli Albizzi, Palla Strozzi, and Angelo Acciaiuoli. In the fifth fresco, where St. Francis is bringing a dead child to life, Ghirlandaio has painted his own portrait. He is conspicuous in a red cap and resting his hand upon his hip.

THE UMBRIAN SCHOOL

The Umbrian School occupied the relative place in the Early Renaissance that the Sienese School held in the Middle Ages. At first, Umbrian painting was the offspring of Siena, but it fell under and developed under the influence of Florence. Florentine artists came to Umbria and Umbrian artists went to Florence, and gradually the Umbrian School, which had certain qualities of its own, developed and reached full flower in the beloved of all the world,—Raphael.

The word Umbrian is used rather loosely by critics to include many Tuscan painters who have to be gathered into this group, which dates from the end of the Fourteenth and beginning of the Fifteenth Century. One particular quality of the Umbrians was their essentially deep religious feeling.

“Whereas the devotion of Sienese art had been hieratic, aristocratic, and akin to the ideals of Mediæval Byzantium, that of Umbria became ecstatically human. The Renaissance trend towards bringing to earth the regal Christian gods of the Middle Ages was nowhere so strong as in Umbria; and it is not an exaggeration to say that we owe to the Umbrians our modern visual images of the Eternal, the Madonna, and the other important members of the Christian Pantheon. The piety and humility of the figures was deepened and dignified by a specially emphasized space-composition, both architectural and landscape. Landscape backgrounds were given unusual importance and delicate beauty. The Umbrian School thus became the most charming, the tenderest, and the most intimately human of Renaissance Italy.”—Mediæval and Renaissance Paintings (Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 1927).

The first great Umbrian painter was Gentile da Fabriano (1370?–1427), pupil of an earlier Umbrian painter, Allegretto Nuzi (active from 1346 to 1373), in turn a pupil of the Florentine Bernardo Daddi.

The next important Umbrian was Piero della Francesca or Pier dei Franceschi (1416?–1492), pupil of Domenico Veneziano of Florence, important in his own work and important as a master, forming Luca Signorelli, who in turn influenced Michelangelo. Piero della Francesca was also influenced by the Florentine, Paolo Uccello, whose scientific leanings towards perspective he shared. As a colorist, as a painter of light and atmosphere, and as a master of composition, Piero della Francesca ranks with the greatest Italian masters of the Early Renaissance.

By this time Perugia had become the most important centre of painting in Umbria. Among its conspicuous artists was Benedetto Bonfigli (1425–1496); Fiorenzo di Lorenzo (1440–1521), the supposed master of Perugino and Pintoricchio; Perugino, whose real name was Pietro Vannucci (1446–1523); Bernard Pintoricchio “the little painter” (1454–1513), whose real name was Bernard di Betto, or Biagio; and the great Raphael (1483–1520), son of the painter Giovanni Santi of Urbino; and with this painter of the world’s favorite Madonnas the Umbrian School practically ends.

MADONNA AND CHILD.

No little suggestion of the Giotto Madonna (shown on page 27), appears in the Madonna and Child by Gentile da Fabriano, which, according to Colosanti, was painted in the best period of the artist, shortly before he produced the Adoration of the Kings, now in the Uffizi. In comparing it with the Giotto Madonna, we see that the arch has become slightly more pointed than the one in the Giotto picture and we find also a gold background; but in the Fabriano painting a graffito design of two winged Angels with flowing robes on either side is slightly visible. As in the Giotto picture the two nimbi are different; the Virgin’s nimbus having an Arabic inscription and the nimbus of the Holy Child having a Gothic foliage. The Virgin is seated on a cassone, or chest (a not unusual but hardly very comfortable seat in the Fourteenth Century), covered with a dark-brown cloth with floral figure behind which a tiled floor is seen. The Virgin wears a long tunic of claret-colored damask with gold border, on which appears the motto “Ave Maria Plena Dom—— Tecu—— Ben.” On the border around the neck the word “Mater” appears. The mantle is slit at the sides through which the arm protrudes in a long sleeve of rich gold brocade with the pomegranate pattern. A scarf of thin yellow woollen material, decorated with red and blue flowers and red fringe, is worn around her head and neck. The Holy Child has on a little dress, very neatly made and fitting very snugly, of dark-blue trimmed with a border of red and gold. He is standing with His left foot on His mother’s knee and is stepping forward with the other. He has raised His right hand as if to emphasize the words He is speaking and to which His mother is listening with rapt admiration. This movement of the Child takes something away from the solemnity of the picture and the Virgin’s maternal pride shows her to be more of this earth than the Giotto Madonna whose calm, impassive yet tender beauty, proclaims her to belong to a higher sphere than does the Fabriano.

The picture, tempera on panel (38 × 22½ inches), belonged to the Alexander Baker Collection, London, and to the Collection of Madame E. J. Sartoris, Paris.

Gentile da Fabriano’s full name was Gentile di Nicola di Giovanni di Masso and he was born at Fabriano about 1370. He was a pupil of Allegretto Nuzi and possibly of Ottaviano Nelli. Vasari says, too, that he studied under Fra Angelico. He worked in Fabriano, Brescia, and Venice; and in 1422 he became a member of the Guild in Florence. Later he painted in Orvieto, Siena, and Rome, where Pope Martin V called him to paint in San Giovanni Laterano. Subsequently Gentile painted in Venice, Florence and other places, learning all that was new from other painters he met and everywhere attracting followers; but never forgetting his early Sienese inheritance in his love for beauty and for decoration.

Gentile da Fabriano became so much of a traveller and cosmopolitan that he has to be classed as an “Internationalist” as well as a Sienese painter. Gentile had a marvellous talent for presenting brilliant and beautiful pictures of the courtly life he saw around him and which was fast passing away for the styles and fashions of the approaching Renaissance. His Adoration of the Magi, now in the Accademia delle Belle Arti, Florence, is a gorgeous representation of a procession such as the painter had doubtless many times witnessed. It is while thinking of this brilliant Adoration of the Magi that Berenson exclaims: “Fair knights and lovely ladies, spurs of gold, jewelled brocade, crimson damasks, gorgeous trains on regal steeds ride under golden skies wherein bright suns flatter charmed mountain tops. All the faces are aglow with blitheness. Why are they so happy? Have they waked from nightmare hauntings of Purgatory and Hell? So it would seem; and they rejoice in the blood tickling their veins, in the cool breezes, in the smell of flowers. And what a love of flowers! Gentile fills with them even the nooks and crannies of the woodwork enframing his gorgeous Epiphany.”

Gentile died in 1427,—the one great Umbrian of the Middle Ages.

Michelangelo remarked of Gentile that his name was in perfect harmony with the tone of his works.

MADONNA AND CHILD WITH ANGELS.

We have here a very unusual background, reminding us of the Arabian desert,—tall, barren rocks; and against these the Virgin is seated. Her costume is very lovely, consisting of a red tunic cut square across the neck and finished with a broad band of gold embroidery, and a blue mantle lined with yellow. Over her blonde hair, which is arranged in the style favored by Italian ladies of fashion, waved and parted and falling down at the sides of the cheeks, a white veil is folded in intricate plaits and made to ripple gracefully down over the shoulders. Above this complicated head-dress is a golden nimbus. The Holy Child, resting on her lap, steadied by the Virgin’s hand and additionally supported by the graceful hand of the little Angel, is partly swathed in muslin. One of His little hands rests on His mother’s veil and the other reaches for a pomegranate,[10] which she is holding. The dress of the Angel is red bordered with ermine and the bottom of the tunic is edged with a deep gold band of Cufic lettering. The nimbi are tooled in gold and that of the Holy Child is cruciform. The strong wings of the Angels soar up boldly above their heads and make a perfect balance to the rocks behind the Virgin.

The picture is tempera on wood (31½ × 21 inches).

Bonfigli is regarded as the founder of the School of Perugia which became so famous through Perugino, who perpetuates the name of the town.

Little is known of Benedetto Bonfigli, who was born about 1425, in Perugia, and was buried there in the Church of St. Domenico in 1496. Bonfigli shows in his work the influences of Piero della Francesca, Fra Angelico, Camillo Boccatis, and Benozzo Gozzoli. Bonfigli was in Rome in 1453 working for Pope Nicholas V, and in the following year he was back in Perugia painting a series of frescoes for the Capella dei Priori in the Palazzo del Consiglio depicting St. Louis of Toulouse and St. Ercolano, which were unfinished at the time of his death. Bonfigli painted processional banners and small pictures as well as frescoes. Many of Bonfigli’s works are now in the Gallery at Perugia.

“As an artist Bonfigli scarcely ranks as high as Niccolò da Foligno, his fellow-pupil under Benozzo Gozzoli. He was a much more dependent person, but being more imitative, with the models of Fra Angelico or Benozzo before him, he at times painted exquisite things and by nature he was gifted with that sense of the charming wherewith Perugia was later to take the world captive. Some of the freshest and loveliest of all angel faces may be seen in Bonfigli’s altar-pieces and standards. His color has almost always that tint of gold which never fades from Umbrian art.”[11]

MADONNA AND CHILD.

In red robe and blue mantle the Virgin appears seated three quarters to the left and supporting the Holy Child on her left knee with both hands. Her head is slightly inclined and the hair, parted above her forehead, is brushed plainly down either side and looped up rather curiously at the back and tied there by a narrow veil. The Holy Child looks away towards the left. Behind the figures is seen one of those delightful Umbrian landscapes made so famous by Perugino and Raphael.

This picture, an oil painting on panel (27¾ × 19½ inches), has an interesting pedigree. From the family of the Marquis of Villafranca it came into possession of the Marquis de la Romana from the Palace of Anglona, Madrid, and then belonged to the Collection of the Marquis de Villamajor, Madrid. The wife of the latter says:

“This painting of the Madonna and Child by Perugino has been for many generations in my husband’s family. It comes from the family of the Marquises de Villafranca who lived in Italy in the Sixteenth Century and of which several members were Viceroys of Naples (Alvarez de Toledo). The Marquis of Romana, having acquired the Palace of the Prince d’Anglona in Madrid, assembled all the pictures and works of art inherited from his ancestors which were in the Palaces of Valencia, Palma de Mallorque, and in Italy, thus forming a fine and important Collection in which were paintings by Goya, Cameron, Ribera, Velasquez, and many paintings of the Italian, Flemish, and French Schools. On the death of the Marquis de la Romana, his son, the Marquis de Villamajor, received a part of this Collection (which was divided between him and his brothers), and this Perugino comes from the Marquis de Villamajor’s heritage.”

Perugino was born at Città della Pieve, near Perugia, about 1446, and died (probably of the Plague), at Castello di Fontignano, also near Perugia, in 1523. His real name was Pietro Vannucci and he was also called Pier della Pieve; but he is known always and everywhere as Perugino from Perugia, where he spent his early life and learned his art. It is uncertain under whom he studied before he went to Florence, but he certainly assisted Piero della Francesca at Arezzo. At Florence, he worked in Verrocchio’s studio, having Leonardo da Vinci and Lorenzo di Credi for fellow-students. Then in 1475 he was commissioned to paint in the Palazzo Pubblico, Perugia. In 1481–1482 he was working in Rome in the Sistine Chapel with Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Cosimo Rosselli, and Signorelli. Of his four frescoes here only one remains, Delivery of the Keys to St. Peter; the other three were destroyed to make room for Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. Perugino also painted in the Vatican and remained about ten years in Rome. Then he returned to Florence and had a studio there and also in Perugia. Besides, he travelled about a great deal to execute commissions in various cities. In 1490, for instance, he was in Rome again painting for Cardinal della Rovere an altar-piece now in the Villa Albani; in 1494 he was in Venice and Cremona; and in 1496 in Pavia, working for “Il Moro,” Duke of Milan. The three principal pictures of the beautiful altar-piece that Perugino painted for the Certosa, or Carthusian Convent near Pavia—The Virgin adoring the Infant Christ; Tobias and the Angel Raphael; and the Archangel Michael—are now in the National Gallery, London.

In 1495 Perugino was again working in Perugia; and it was then that Raphael, a boy of about twelve, became his pupil. At this time Perugino was the most celebrated of all the Umbrian painters. His best work was accomplished between 1490 and 1505. To this period belongs The Marriage of the Virgin, now in the Museum of Caen, Normandy, a picture that Raphael very closely followed, but eclipsed in beauty, in his Sposalizio, now in the Brera, Milan.

About 1590 Perugino painted his famous frescoes in the Sala di Cambio, Perugia, in which he introduced his own portrait; and in 1505 he painted The Triumph of Chastity for the Marchese Isabella of Mantua, which is now in the Louvre.

After another visit to Rome he worked principally in churches in the neighborhood of Perugia, the last of which is supposed to be The Nativity, painted for the Church of Fontignano (where he died), and which is now in the South Kensington Museum.

Perugino was one of the earliest of the Italians who mastered the use of oil, then a new medium. In his constant moving around and visiting so many important cities, Perugino had every opportunity of seeing what the other artists of his day were doing. However, although he worked with the latest materials, Perugino remained faithful to the style of art known as the Quattrocento, which before his death was being rapidly superseded by the Cinquecento, of which Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were the chief exponents. Like Piero della Francesca he also advanced the science of perspective. For a time Perugino adopted the Florentine style, especially with regard to composition; but eventually he developed his own manner of grace, softness, delicacy, tenderness of color, great expression in faces and figures, and his unusually charming landscapes.

Berenson speaks particularly of Perugino’s “space composition:”[12] and in this art “Perugino surpassed all who ever came before him, and indeed all who came after him, excepting, however, his own pupil, Raphael, by whom even he was left far behind. Perugino had a feeling for beauty in women, charm in young men, and dignity in the old, seldom surpassed before or since. Then there is a well-ordered seemliness, a sanctuary aloofness in all his people which makes them things apart, untouched, and pure. Great reserve also does much for him. Violent action he doubtless avoided because he felt himself unequal to the task—indeed, so little did he ever master movement that his figures when walking dance on tiptoe and on their feet they never stand; but he as carefully kept away from unseemly expression of emotion. How refreshingly quiet are his Crucifixions and Entombments! The still air is soundless and the people wail no more; a sigh inaudible, a look of yearning, and that is all. How soothing must such paintings have been after the din and turmoil and slaughter of Perugia, the bloodiest town in Italy! Can it be wondered that men, women, and children ran to see them? Nor yet is life so free from sordid cares and meaningless broils that we can forego such balm for the soul as Perugino brings.”

THE NICCOLINI MADONNA.

This picture came directly from the Niccolini Palace where it was purchased in 1780 by George Nassau, third Earl Cowper, who was at that time His Majesty’s Ambassador to the Court of Tuscany; and it was so prized that in order to get the picture out of Florence without any disturbance it had to be hidden in the lining of the Ambassador’s carriage. Another name for the picture is The Cowper Madonna of 1508. The picture now comes from the Collection of Lady Desborough, of Panshanger, Hertfordshire, who inherited it from her brother, Francis Thomas, seventh Earl Cowper.

The painting, an oil on panel (30½ × 22 inches), represents the Madonna seated in the open air in a dark, rose-red robe with long close-fitting undersleeves of yellow-green, ultramarine-blue mantle, and diaphanous veil. Around the neck of the dress and the hem of the mantle what appears to be a decorative band of golden embroidery is really the signature of the painter “M(D or CCCC)VIII. R. U. Pin,” meaning 1508 Raphael of Urbino Pinxit. And, by the way, is it not possible that Sir Joshua Reynolds got the idea from this picture of painting his name on the robe of Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse? It will be remembered that Mrs. Siddons sat for that magnificent portrait in 1784. The Niccolini Madonna was bought by Earl Cowper in 1780 and, undoubtedly, Sir Joshua was very familiar with it. Moreover, at this date, Raphael’s masterpiece was also very fresh in the mind of the English picture-world.