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"You must, however, restrain your natural impatience a little longer, until another night has passed. I will, if you please, myself spend some hours in the Grey Room after dark, and learn what the medieval spirits have to tell me. Shall I see the wraith of Prince Djem, think you? Or the ghost of Pinturicchio hovering round his little picture?

These paintings are now lost, and with them the portraits of the members of the Borgia family. Pinturicchio doubtless painted several likenesses of the beautiful Lucretia. Probably many of the figures in the paintings of this master resemble the Borgias, but of this we are not certain.

My friend, I was thinking of you all the while. And if you could have been a friend of Pinturicchio in the noblest sense, why not of me? I am not trying to play with words or with ideas, or to perplex you, or to excite your doubts or your desires. I think you have never had a friend.

The Malatestas and Borgias, of whom we have heard too much, did not employ Alberti and Pier della Francesca, Pinturicchio and Bramante, to satisfy their convict wickedness, but to satisfy their artistic taste, which, in so far, was perfectly sound, as various others among their faculties, their eye and ear, and sense of cause and effect, were apparently sound also.

The scrupulously rendered details of books, chairs, window seats, &c., which he here has copied, remind one of Carpaccio's study of S. Benedict at Venice. It is all sweet, tender, delicate, and carefully finished; but without depth, not even the depth of Perugino's feeling. In S. Francesco, Pinturicchio, with the same meticulous refinement, painted a letter addressed to him by Gentile Baglioni.

It is well known that there was a faithful portrait of Alexander VI and his children above the altar of S. Lucia in the Church of S. Maria del Popolo, the work of Pinturicchio. Later, when Alexander restored this church, the painting was removed to the court of the cloister, and eventually it was lost.

And Pierre found but one word to express his feelings: Michael Angelo was the monster dominating and crushing all others. Beneath his immense achievement you had only to glance at the works of Perugino, Pinturicchio, Roselli, Signorelli, and Botticelli, those earlier frescoes, admirable in their way, which below the cornice spread out around the chapel.

It is all sweet, tender, delicate, and carefully finished; but without depth, not even the depth of Perugino's feeling. In S. Francesco, Pinturicchio, with the same meticulous refinement, painted a letter addressed to him by Gentile Baglioni. It lies on a stool before Madonna and her court of saints.

Spello contains some not inconsiderable antiquities the remains of a Roman theatre, a Roman gate with the heads of two men and a woman leaning over it, and some fragments of Roman sculpture scattered through its buildings. The churches, especially those of S.M. Maggiore and S. Francesco, are worth a visit for the sake of Pinturicchio.

In a very fine example by Ghirlandajo, St. Dominick and St. Peter Martyr are conspicuous: painted, of course, for the Dominicans. In another, by Pinturicchio, St. Francis is a principal figure, with St. Bonaventura and St. In another, by Guido, the treatment differs from the early style. The coronation above is small and seen as a vision; the saints below, St. Bernard and St.