AT the head of the various local centres of painting which form the school of Umbria we must place Alegretto Nuzi (died 1385), whose works are very rarely met with in museums north of Italy. He inherited the best Giottesque traditions, and became the teacher of Gentile da Fabriano (1360?–1428), an early master whose influence was more far-reaching and inspiring than we can to-day trace in any detail. The Louvre has the good fortune to contain a precious little predella panel of the Presentation in the Temple (No. 1278), which is very decorative and exhibits a strongly marked appreciation of architecture. It is the only separated panel from the predella of Gentile’s large and magnificent altarpiece of the Adoration of the Magi, of 1423, which was seized by Napoleon but was returned in 1815. It is now in the Accademia at Florence.

The Miracle of St. Nicholas giving a Dowry to the Three Daughters of a Nobleman (No. 1659), which is officially classed among the unattributable works of the Florentine school, is now considered to be by Giovanni Francesco da Rimini, while the Madonna and Child (No. 1300a or 1300b) which is officially ascribed to Piero dei Franceschi, the leading painter of his generation in the school of Umbria, must, as we have seen, be given to Alessio Baldovinetti of the Florentine school.

Again, the three-panel picture (No. 1415) which is credited to Pesellino of Florence is in reality from the hand of the Umbrian artist Fiorenzo di Lorenzo (1440–1521). The collection is not rich in the works of the earliest painters of this school, but the Birth of the Virgin (No. 1525), a detached panel from a lost or unidentified altarpiece by Luca Signorelli (1441–1523), gives us some idea of the great power of this influential master, whose knowledge of composition and anatomy is best seen in his frescoes at Orvieto. Signorelli’s sense of complicated movement and crowded action mark an epoch in the art of Umbria. The Fragment of a Large Picture (No. 1527) seems to be imbued with his spirit, but the large Adoration of the Magi (No. 1526) which comes from CittÀ di Castello, and a Madonna and Child with St. Louis of Toulouse, St. Catherine, and other Saints (No. 1528), contain none of the vigorous originality of that master from whom even Michelangelo did not disdain to borrow on occasion. Three predella panels (No. 1120) have been dismembered from a large altarpiece by NiccolÒ da Foligno, and were originally painted for a side altar in the Church of S. NiccolÒ at Foligno. In the art of this over-emotional Umbrian, what is meant for deep religious feeling is by exaggeration almost transformed into grimacing passion.

PERUGINO

NiccolÒ’s most illustrious contemporary in this school was Pietro Perugino (1446–1523). Over fifty of the religious pictures of this influential and accomplished master were carried off from Central Italy by Napoleon. He is well represented in this Gallery. The contemplative and deeply impressive pictures of his less mannered style are among the best pictures which Umbria has given us, but there is a tendency, notably towards the end of his career, to repeat his compositions, only altering the attitude of a single figure, and so exhibiting a marked lack of originality. His early Holy Family with St. Rose and St. Catherine (No. 1564), painted about 1491, is a little cramped; the tondo hardly provides sufficient space to contain the rather stiff figures, and the treatment is unpleasantly conventional. It also recalls the art of Fiorenzo di Lorenzo. The St. Sebastian (No. 1566a, Plate VI.), which is inscribed:

is a favourite subject with this master, who painted it at least eight times on a large scale, as well as in a miniature now lent to the National Gallery by Mr. H. Yates Thompson. The Holy Family with St. Catherine (No. 1565) is said to bear the characteristic signature:

The Combat of Love and Chastity (No. 1567) was commissioned by Isabella d’Este, Duchess of Mantua, in 1505, and removed at the sack of that city in 1630 to the ChÂteau of Richelieu, where it remained down to the Revolution. The St. Paul (No. 1566) is a very late and not very attractive work. In his best pictures Perugino loved to paint a purist landscape with its buoyant spaciousness of view, but too frequently his figures are insufficiently dramatic and have a tendency towards sentimentality. A very late St. Sebastian (No. 1668a), which is on a much smaller scale than the subject of our illustration (Plate VI.), is officially catalogued as being by an Unknown Umbrian painter. The Apollo and Marsyas (No. 1509), which was purchased at Christie’s in 1850 for £70 by Morris Moore, with an ascription to Mantegna, was in 1883 sold to the Louvre for £8000. It long hung in the Salon CarrÉ as a Raphael, but is now only attributed to him by the cataloguer. This gem of Umbrian art has successively been ascribed by critics to Pintoricchio, Timoteo Viti, Francesco Francia, and others, but is to-day generally regarded as a very fine example of the art of Perugino. Two pictures (No. 1573 and No. 1573a) of the Madonna and Child are by unidentifiable pupils of Perugino.

One of the most recent acquisitions is a Madonna by Antoniazzo Romano (1440?–1508), the gift of M. Lucien Delamarre. The art of Pintoricchio (1454–1513) is shown in the Madonna and Child with St. Gregory and another Saint (No. 1417), while Lo Spagna (1475?–1528?), a pupil of Perugino, is represented by a Nativity (No. 1539), a Madonna and Child (No. 1540), and by three small pictures illustrating the Dead Christ, the Virgin, and St. John (No. 1568), St. Francis of Assisi receiving the Stigmata (No. 1569), and St. Jerome in the Desert (No. 1570).

A mediocre pupil of Perugino and Pintoricchio, Giannicola Manni (fl. 1493–1544), is doubtless responsible for the Baptism of Christ (No. 1369), the Assumption (No. 1370), the Adoration of the Magi (No. 1371), and the Holy Family (1372) which pass under his name. The last-mentioned panel was attributed by Villot, apparently without much reason, to L’Ingegno.

RAPHAEL

The majority of the thirteen pictures which in the Louvre are unreservedly catalogued under the great name of Raphael (1483–1520) certainly belong to his third or Roman period, and in many of them he obviously received a large amount of assistance from his pupil, Giulio Romano. It is this fact, no doubt, which has led the compiler of the Catalogue to place the “Divine Urbinate” in the Roman school. It will, however, be readily admitted that such a classification is both arbitrary and misleading.

Although he lived but thirty-seven years, Raphael gave to the world a vast amount of art treasure. Brought up in Urbino, where his father, Giovanni Santi, was poet as well as painter, he passed before he was fifteen under the direct influence of Timoteo Viti, who had worked at Bologna under Francesco Francia. Raphael became the pupil of Perugino at Perugia about 1500, and also worked as the assistant of Pintoricchio. His art being thus formed on the best Umbrian tradition, Raphael in October 1504 left Perugia for Florence, and it was only at that date that he began to acquire a distinctive style of his own. During his second or Florentine period he painted the St. George and the Dragon (No. 1503), in which is seen the chivalrous knight mounted on a pure white steed; his lance is broken in his combat with the monster, and he is forced to use his sword, while the little Princess Cleodolinda flees in abject terror into the background. The very small panel of St. Michael (No. 1502), which is a chessboard on the back, was painted for Guidobaldo, Duke of Urbino, and eventually passed into the collections of Cardinal Mazarin and Louis xiv. The Madonna and Child which has come to be known as La Belle JardiniÈre (No. 1496, Plate VII.) is rather later than the Madonna del Gran’ Duca in the Pitti Palace, the Cardellino Madonna in the Uffizi, and the Ansidei Madonna in the National Gallery. It is one of the most famous of Raphael’s saintly and ideal Madonnas; the pose of the figures is easy, the treatment simple, the colour exquisite. The landscape background is poetic in feeling, and conveys the mood which makes this one of Raphael’s most pleasing creations. The thin feathery trees and the treatment of the Virgin’s hair are still Peruginesque, but the superiority of the pupil to the master is gradually making itself felt. The Infant Christ is standing on the right foot of His mother. Tradition says that Raphael entrusted to Ridolfo Ghirlandaio the task of painting in the blue of the Virgin’s garment. The drapery is apparently inscribed:

After working for four years in Florence, Raphael went in the summer of 1508 to Rome, where he achieved such a vast amount of work for Popes Julius ii. and Leo x. His work was increased by his appointment, on the death of Bramante in 1514, as Architect of St. Peter’s and Inspector of Antiquities.

About 1515–16 Raphael delighted to paint the Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione (No. 1505, Plate VIII.), who was his lifelong friend and adviser as well as the author of Il Cortegiano. This picture, which is eloquent testimony to Raphael’s skill as a portrait painter, was originally on wood, but it was long ago transferred to canvas, which has unfortunately abraded, the paint having peeled off the hands. After the death of Castiglione in Spain, this picture which he had taken with him passed into the possession of the Duke of Mantua, and thence into the collection of Charles i., where it seems to have been copied by Rubens. It subsequently became the property of a Dutch amateur named Van Asselen, and was copied by Rembrandt. Later, it was sold for 3500 florins to Don Alfonso Lopez, a collector at Amsterdam, and after figuring in the collection of Mazarin was acquired by Louis xiv.

The Holy Family of Francis I. (No. 1498) was commissioned by Lorenzo de’ Medici and presented to the Queen of FranÇois i. by Pope Leo x. It was originally painted on wood, and was forwarded to Lyons on April 19, 1518. During the reign of Louis xiv. it hung in the grand appartement at Versailles, and having been placed near a fireplace had to be relined. It then had wings, but they were destroyed at the time of the Revolution. Although it is very ostentatiously signed

on the edge of the robe of the kneeling Madonna, there can be no question that it was only designed by Raphael, the execution being wholly or in great part carried out by the master’s best pupil, Giulio Romano. In the Sistine Madonna and such works as Raphael painted at this period entirely with his own hand we see that his technique had become masterly and his powers of composition had developed to the utmost. Compared with La Belle JardiniÈre of a decade earlier, a greater knowledge of craftsmanship has been accompanied by a loss of purity and simplicity.

Two years before his death Raphael had designed the large but by no means imposing St. Michael overcoming Satan (No. 1504), the execution of which on panel was certainly due to Giulio Romano. It was a gift from Lorenzo de’ Medici to FranÇois i., the original cartoon being presented by Raphael to the Duke of Ferrara. This picture, like the Holy Family of Francis I., was originally protected by folding wings, the inner sides of which were lined with green velvet, while the outer were gilded and painted with arabesques. The two pictures arrived at Fontainebleau in July 1518, having been carried on the back of mules by way of Florence and Lyons. As early as 1530 the St. Michael was restored by Primaticcio and by many others subsequently, notably in 1752. The picture was transferred to canvas by Picault, who received for his labours the large sum of 11,500 livres, a sum quite out of proportion to its Æsthetic or financial value to-day. It was again restored in 1776, 1800, and 1850. It is signed in gilt characters on the edge of the Archangel’s tunic:

The Demon is not shown, as in the early and small picture of the same subject (No. 1502), as a dragon, but as a half-human monster with horns and tail. The foreshortening is undoubtedly clever, but the picture is too instantaneous in its dramatic action. In the course of time the high lights have gone down and the shadows darkened in the metallic-looking figure of the Archangel.

The Virgin with the Blue Diadem or the Virgin with the Veil (No. 1497) is one of at least ten pictures in this collection which were carried out by Giulio Romano (1492?–1546). It is here credited to Raphael. It has been repeatedly restored. A very large number of replicas, variants, and old copies of this panel exist. The following “Raphaels” may be regarded as the work of Giulio: the Small Holy Family with St. Elizabeth (No. 1499); the much restored Saint Margaret (No. 1501); the Portrait of Joan of Arragon (No. 1507), whom Raphael apparently never saw; and the Portraits of Two Men seen to the Bust (which has been called Raphael and his Fencing Master) (No. 1508). Giulio certainly painted the Triumph of Titus and Vespasian (No. 1420), the Venus and Vulcan (No. 1421), and the Portrait of a Man (No. 1422), which are catalogued under his name, and in all probability the three large Cartoons entitled A Triumph, The Triumph of Scipio, and The Taking and Burning of a City, which hang on the Escalier Daru. The Circumcision (No. 1438) which figures officially under the name of the Bolognese painter Bartolommeo Ramenghi (Il Bagnacavallo) (1484–1542) is by Giulio Romano.

The fresco painting of The Eternal Father (No. 1512), which is now inserted over the door of the Salle des Primitifs (Room VII.), was certainly executed during the lifetime of Raphael, and probably under his supervision. It was painted for the chapel attached to the Villa Magliana, a favourite hunting-box of Pope Leo x., who commissioned it. It was purchased in 1873 for the large sum of £8280.

From the hand of Giannicola Manni (fl. 1493–1544) come the Baptism of Christ (No. 1369), the Assumption (No. 1370), the Adoration of the Magi (No. 1371), and a Holy Family (No. 1372), while a fully signed Dead Christ supported by Two Angels (No. 1400) is by the mediocre Umbrian artist Marco Palmezzano (fl. 1456–1538). The latter’s pupil, Zaganelli da Cottignola (1460?–1531), may have painted the Christ bearing His Cross (No. 1641) which is catalogued as an unattributable Italian work.