Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 1, 2025
Perugino's picture shows us Francesco, a clean-shaven and young person, holding a scroll on which is written, "Trineta Deum;" the portrait is a half-length, and the hands are visible. In the background is a characteristic country of hill and valley under the deep serene sky, the light and clear golden air that we see in so much of his work.
When he went to Florence, where you know he spent some years, he fell under the influence of the Florentine artists, and his work gradually lost its resemblance to Perugino's. It gained more freedom, action, grace, and strength of color.
These early painters have made up their Paganism for themselves, out of all pleasant things they knew; their fancy has brooded upon it; and the very details that make us laugh, the details coming direct from the Middle Ages, the spirit in glaring opposition occasionally to that of Antiquity, bring home to us how completely this Pagan fairyland is a genuine reality to these men. We feel this in nearly all the work of that sort least, in the archæological Mantegna's. We see it beginning in the mere single figures the various drawings of Orpheus, "Orpheus le doux menestrier jouant de flutes et de musettes," as Villon called him, much about that time piping or fiddling among little toy animals out of a Nuremberg box; the drawing of fauns carrying sheep, some with a queer look of the Good Shepherd about them, of Pinturicchio; and rising to such wonderful exhibitions (to me, with their obscure reminiscence of pageants, they always seem like ballets) as Perugino's Ceiling of the Cambio, where, among arabesqued constellations, the gods of antiquity move gravely along: the bearded knight Mars, armed cap-
A greater degree of naïveté and naturalness compensates for the inferiority of Francia's to Perugino's supremely perfect handling.
It is much to be regretted, with a view to solving the question of Perugino's personality in relation to his art, that his character does not emerge with any salience from the meagre notices we have received concerning him, and that we know but little of his private life.
But Botticelli's painted statue and Perugino's "S. Michael" and "Warriors" of the Cambio seem to spread their legs because they are too puny to bear the weight of the body in any other manner, while with Signorelli, the attitude became the keynote of his resolute indomitable nature, and so much a part of his work, that one is apt to forget it did not originate with him.
He talked openly of his dislike of the new style, and once he had a serious quarrel with the great Michelangelo. There was a gathering of painters in Perugino's studio that day. Filippino Lippi, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, and Leonardo were there, and in the background the pupil Raphael was listening to the talk. 'What dost thou think of this new style of painting? asked Botticelli.
The spirituality that renders Fra Angelico unintelligible to minds less ecstatically tempered than his own, is not found in such excess in Francia, nor does his work suffer from the insipidity of Perugino's affectation. Deep religious feeling is combined with physical beauty of the purest type in a masterpiece of tranquil grace.
Allow her a fine little head, the timid freshness natural to her age, a blush-rose skin, slim neck, and that glorious weight of hair: there is Perugino's wife! Add that she was vested in a milky green robe which was cut square and low at the neck and fitted her close, and I have no more to say on her score than she had on any. As for the Maestro himself, I got to know him better.
Its material is a vivid green bronze, and the mantle and tiara are covered with a delicate embroidery worthy of a silver-smith. Then our leisurely friend must bestow on Perugino's frescoes in the Exchange, and on his pictures in the University, all the placid contemplation they deserve.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking