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A FACT that another has once discovered and substantiated seems so obvious to those who come after, that they can hardly understand how it could so long have remained unrecognised. To Morelli belongs the credit of having swept away the tradition that in Signorelli and Perugino were to be found the authors of the two frescoes, “The Journey of Moses” and “The Baptism,” on either side of the altar-piece in the Sixtine Chapel. After four hundred years of gathering oblivion came one who looked with open eyes, disregarding all mere tradition, and who saw the handwriting of Pintoricchio writ large upon the walls, waiting there, full within sight, yet overlooked, till, after centuries, the truth is acknowledged, unmistakable, supported not only by internal evidence but by drawings and studies—direct testimony affording conclusive proof of their authorship.

It is perhaps owing to Melozzo da Forli being court painter to the Vatican in 1480 that we may attribute the preference shown in the first instance to Umbrians in the choice of decorators for Sixtus IV.’s new chapel. To Perugino the direction seems to have been given in the first place, he and his assistants arriving in Rome in October 1482. Here they would have had a great deal to prepare, the spaces to plan, the Pope’s directions to consider, the ornamentation of the windows and the niches for the martyred Popes to decide upon. The scheme of the type and anti-type which balances the opposite walls, is very probably due to the Pope and his advisers. Pope Sixtus was a writer on theology, was esteemed a man of profound scholarship, and had in the years immediately preceding written several books on important points of doctrine. Perugino was at that time the undisputed head of the school of Umbria, and his religious spirit and conventional treatment of sacred subjects was likely to be much more acceptable to the Holy See than the new spirit of scientific inquiry. The contract between him and the Pope makes it probable that at first he and his assistants were to be entrusted with the entire work. Whether the Pope got impatient and wished to see his chapel more speedily completed, or for what other reason, is uncertain; but when Giuliano della Rovere went to Florence in December, he agreed with a number of Florentines to resort to Rome, and the whole company of artists was gathered there by the year 1483. Foremost among these was Sandro Botticelli, and from documents which have recently come to light we gather that the superintendence of the entire scheme was finally entrusted to him and not to Perugino.

Among the assistants brought by Perugino, were “Rocco Zoppo and Bernardino Betti, called il Pintoricchio.” The operations of the first were limited to certain portraits of the Rovere family in the altar-piece, which at that time represented the “Assumption,” by Perugino, with the “Finding of Moses” and the “Nativity of Christ” as the beginning of the two sacred histories. Pintoricchio’s place, in his master’s estimation, was a very different one. We have no reason to doubt that he was Perugino’s right-hand man. From the degree to which he has imbibed his style, he must have been working with him for some time before, and the drawings in the Venetian sketch-book, as it is generally called, so long erroneously attributed to Raphael, make it clear that he supplied Perugino with designs for several of his principal figures, which the master altered slightly to suit his taste when he came to transfer them to the plaster.

Vasari[17] tells us that Pintoricchio worked with Perugino in the Sixtine Chapel, and took a third of the profits, but this testimony afforded no clue to former critics, and for some centuries “The Journey of Moses” was attributed to Luca Signorelli. Burckhardt was the first to dispute this claim, and to ascribe the fresco with more vraisemblance to Perugino.[18] Crowe and Cavalcaselle[19] repudiate the attribution to Signorelli. They see in both this and “The Baptism” the work of Perugino, but in parts, in the young man stripping, and in the youth by his side, they recognise a likeness to Pintoricchio, though in the children of “The Journey” they profess to see plainly the hand of Bartolommeo della Gatta.

[17] Manni. Raccolta Milanese di vari opuscoli, vol. i. f. 29.

[18] Vol. iii.

[19] History of Painting in Italy, iii. 1783.

The attribution of these two great frescoes to the younger master has made a great difference to his place in art. In some ways they are the finest and truest works he has left us; it is curious that they are the first that can with certainty be ascribed to him.

Morelli,[20] in appealing to the internal testimony of the frescoes in the Sixtine Chapel, tells us it was their landscape backgrounds which first opened his eyes. He further cites the overcrowding in the composition—“a fault which Pintoricchio very often commits, Perugino hardly ever.” Even the falcon in the air is repeated by Pintoricchio in his frescoes at Siena. The children he compares with those in the chapel in Ara Cœli. He sees the character of the master plainly stamped on many of the individual figures, and on the plan of the composition. Evidence more minute and conclusive is derived from the book of drawings to which I have already alluded. Towards the middle of the nineteenth century these, on the authority of Professor Bossi, were assigned to Raphael. Bossi bought the book at a sale, and deciding that they were studies by the great Urbinate, was full of elation at the acquisition of such a priceless treasure. When at Bossi’s death they were bought by the nation, Passavant, Count Cicognara, and Marchese Estense, all noted connoisseurs, unhesitatingly pronounced them to be by Raphael, and for his work they still pass in the Accademia in Venice.