Pinturicchio

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Bernardino Pinturicchio
Self-portrait at the Baglioni Chapel
Born
Bernardino di Betto

1454
Perugia, Papal States
(present-day Italy)
Died1513 (aged 58–59)
Siena, Republic of Siena
(present-day Italy)
NationalityItalian
EducationPietro Perugino
Known forPainting, fresco
MovementItalian Renaissance
The Crucifixion with Sts. Jerome and Christopher, 1471, oil on wood, 59 × 40 cm, Galleria Borghese, Rome
Fresco at Siena Cathedral depicting Pope Pius II

Pinturicchio, or Pintoricchio (US: /ˌpɪntəˈriːkioʊ/,[1] Italian: [pintuˈrikkjo]; born Bernardino di Betto; 1454–1513), also known as Benetto di Biagio or Sordicchio, was an Italian painter during the Renaissance. He acquired his nickname (meaning "little painter") because of his small stature and he used it to sign some of his artworks that were created during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.[2]

Biography

Early years

Santa Maria in Aracoeli
, Rome

Pinturicchio was born the son of Benedetto or Betto di Biagio, in Perugia. In his career, he may have trained under lesser known Perugian painters such as Bonfigli and Fiorenzo di Lorenzo. According to Vasari, Pinturicchio was a paid assistant of Perugino.

The works of the Perugian Renaissance school are very similar and often paintings by Perugino, Pinturicchio, Lo Spagna, and a young Raphael may be mistaken, one for the other. In the execution of large frescoes, pupils and assistants had a large share in the work, either in enlarging the master's sketch to the full-sized cartoon, in transferring the cartoon to the wall, or in painting backgrounds or accessories.

His assignment in Rome, to decorate the Sistine Chapel, was an experience fraught with learning from prominent artists of the time, including: Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Pietro Vanucci, and Luca Signorelli. The Sistine Chapel was where it is believed that Pinturicchio was collaborating with Perugino to some extent.[2] Pinturicchio's fresco, Assumption of Mary, executed in 1481 on the alter wall of the Sistine Chapel, was destroyed in 1535 to make way for Michelangelo's Last Judgement.

Work in Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome

Saint Jerome in the Desert, c. 1475-1480, oil on panel, 149.8 x 106 cm, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

After assisting Perugino in his

Palazzo dei Penitenzieri as well as a series of chapels in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo
, where he appears to have worked from 1484, or earlier, until 1492.

Critic Evelyn March Phillipps sums up his work by saying that the basilica "[w]ould be, if it had been left with all its original decorations, one of the finest monuments to Pintoricchio’s art in Italy. A great deal still remains, but much has been swept away".[3]

The earliest known of his works is an altarpiece of the Adoration of the Shepherds, in the

St. Jerome. The polychrome grotesque wall decoration on yellow-gold background probably was inspired by the paintings of the Domus Aurea
, and belong the earliest and highest quality of their kind in Rome.

The frescos he painted in the

Cathedral of Massa.[4]

The third chapel on the south is that of

Basso Della Rovere Chapel contains a fine altarpiece, Madonna enthroned between Four Saints, and on the eastern side a very nobly composed fresco of the Assumption of the Virgin. The vault and its lunettes are richly decorated with small paintings of the Life of the Virgin, surrounded by graceful arabesques; and the dado is covered with monochrome paintings of scenes from the lives of saints, illusionistic benches, and very gracefully and powerfully drawn figures of women in full length, in which the influence of Luca Signorelli
may be traced.

In the Costa Chapel, Pinturicchio or one of his helpers painted the Four Latin Doctors in the lunettes of the vault. Most of these frescoes are considerably injured by moisture and have suffered little from restoration. The last paintings completed by Pinturicchio in this church are found on the vault behind the choir, where he painted decorative frescoes, with main lines arranged to suit their surroundings in a skilful way. In the centre is an octagonal panel, Coronation of the Virgin, and surrounding it, are medallions of the Four Evangelists. The spaces between them are filled by reclining figures of the Four Sibyls. On each pendentive is a figure of one of the Four Doctors enthroned under a niched canopy. The bands that separate these paintings have elaborate arabesques on a gold ground, and the whole is painted with broad and effective touches, very telling when seen (as is necessarily the case) from a considerable distance below.

Works in the Vatican Library

In 1492, Pinturicchio was summoned to Orvieto Cathedral. However, he was also commissioned by Pope Alexander VI (Borgia) to decorate a recently completed suite of six rooms, the Borgia Apartments in the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican. These rooms now form part of the Vatican Library, and five still retain a series of Pinturicchio frescoes. He worked in these rooms until around 1494, assisted by his pupils, and not without interruption. It was not until Pope Alexander VI died that Pinturicchio left Rome for Umbria, leaving much of the work in Rome to be completed by Michelangelo, Raphael, and others.[2]

Among other important frescoes by Pinturicchio that still exist in Rome and are in good condition, are in the

St. Bernardino of Siena between two other saints, crowned by angels; in the upper part is a figure of Christ in a mandorla
, surrounded by angel musicians; on the left wall is a large fresco of the miracles performed by the corpse of St. Bernardino, which includes portraits of members of the sponsoring Bufalini family.

One group of three women, the central figure with a child at her breast, recalls the grace of

Santa Croce at Florence. On the vault are four noble figures of the Evangelists, usually attributed to Luca Signorelli, but as with the rest of the frescoes in this chapel, they are more probably by Pinturicchio. On the vault of the sacristy of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, Pinturicchio painted the Almighty surrounded by the Evangelists. During a visit to Orvieto in 1496, Pinturicchio painted in the choir of the Duomo two more figures of the Latin Doctors. For these he received fifty gold ducats. Now, like the rest of his work at Orvieto, these figures are almost destroyed. In Umbria, his masterpiece is the Baglioni Chapel in the church of S. Maria Maggiore in Spello
.

Among his panel paintings the following are the most important: an altarpiece for S. Maria de' Fossi at Perugia, painted in 1496–1498, now moved to the city gallery, depicts a Madonna enthroned among Saints, very minutely painted; the wings of the retable have standing figures of

Da Vinci
.

The Vatican galleries have the largest of Pinturicchio's panels — the Coronation of the Virgin, with the apostles and other saints below. Several well-executed portraits occur among the kneeling saints. The Virgin, who kneels at Christ's feet to receive her crown, is a figure of great tenderness and beauty, and the lower group is composed with great skill and grace in arrangement.

In 1504, Pinturicchio designed a mosaic floor panel for the

Cathedral of Siena: the Story of Fortuna, or the Hill of Virtue. This was executed by Paolo Mannucci in 1506. On top of the panel, a symbolic representation of Knowledge hands the palm of victory to Socrates
.

Among the public collections holding works by Pinturicchio are, the

Pinacoteca Ambrosiana (Milan), Princeton University Art Museum, Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, the Vatican Museums, and the Museum of Fine Arts (Budapest)
.

Portrait of a Boy, c. 1500, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister

Works

Nativity, at Collegiata di Santa Maria Maggiore, Spello, Italy
Assumption of Mary (1481), Sistine Chapel, drawing of fresco lost when destroyed to make space for Michelangelo's Last Judgement
Enea Silvio Piccolomini presents emperor Frederick III with his bride-to-be, Eleanora of Portugal – Siena Cathedral.

Notes

  1. ^ "Pinturicchio". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Retrieved 21 June 2019.
  2. ^ a b c "PINTURICCHIO." Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 14 February 2017. http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/benezit/B00142364 .
  3. ^ Phillipps, cit., pag. 59.
  4. ^ Federici (2003), cit., pp. 344-45, 350.
  5. ^ http://www.arteweb.eu/MULT_BENI_CULTURALI/PintoricchioA3_press.pdf [bare URL PDF]

Sources

  •  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Pinturicchio". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 21 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
  • Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1911). "Pinturicchio" . Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 12. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
  • Scarpellini, Pietro; Maria Rita Silvestrelli (2004). Pintoricchio. Federico Motta Editore.
  • Fabrizio Federici, La diffusione della “prattica romana”: il cardinale Alderano Cybo e le chiese di Massa (1640-1700), in: Atti e Memorie della Deputazione di Storia Patria per le antiche Provincie Modenesi, s. XI - v. XXV, 2003, pp. 315–389.
  • Evelyn March Phillips, Pintoricchio, George Bell & Sons, London, 1901.

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