Portrait of a Boy

Bernardino Pinturicchio (pen-tö-rēk'-kē-ō), 1454–1513

JELICACY of treatment in color and design, restrained and subdued, with a plaintive and feminine feeling, carried too far, perhaps, at times in the expression of sentiment, are characteristics of much of Umbrian art. A livelier sense of decorative use in color is remarked in Bernardino di Betto, called Pinturicchio, the bustling little painter. He was born in Perugia, and was taught, it is said, by Fiorenzo di Lorenzo. He early became associated with his townsman, Perugino, and worked with him in Rome in 1484, on the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel.

It was later in Perugino's shop at Perugia that he came to know the young Raphael from Urbino. During the years 1502 to 1509 he carried out his most important undertaking, the brilliant decoration of the Library of the Duomo at Siena. A certain likeness in some of the designs used, with Raphael's manner, has led to much speculation as to the coöperation of that master in the work.

The great series of paintings in fresco by the artists of this period were in reality far more important than the altarpieces or portraits, with which we are usually more familiar. Pinturicchio painted his smaller things in tempera, although oil was already in use as a medium.

This faithful little portrait, direct and genuine in treatment, attracts by its honesty and simplicity. Slight as are the means used, the result is sufficient and convincing. We must not overlook this example of the delightful landscape backgrounds of the old painters. This placid expanse of wooded country, broken by rocks and pools, and brought into harmony with man by hints of castle or dwelling, has a fullness of charm beyond many a carefully elaborated landscape painting of later times.

HEN Henry Bacon, who was born at Haverhill, Mass., had fought and been severely wounded in his country's service in the Civil War, he seems to have thought that enough had been done for the land of his birth, as his life since has been spent in Paris in the study and practice of painting. He was first the pupil of Cabanel, but Édouard Frère, with whom he studied later, had more influence in leading him to become the painter of mild domestic scenes, sometimes with a tinge of quiet homely humor.

The painters who make up the large American colony in Paris are too often, in their artistic style, nondescript mongrels, neither American nor French, when they have not become second- or third-rate Frenchmen. It would not be easy to tell from Bacon's manner his nationality, although he has treated a number of American topics, not usually meddled with by Europeans. He is a sincere and faithful workman, carrying out the details of his pictures with much care.

This unpretending maritime scene might have taken place on either side of the English Channel or even on our own shores. The disabled boats now converted to homely domestic uses, the nets always needing the hand of the repairer, the good-looking young woman whom painters naturally devote to that business, and even the sailor lad whose part it is to interrupt and hinder her at that needed labor-all these properties Mr. Bacon could have found in his native land, where the addition of a little local color would give it for us an increased value.

Portrait of Michael Wolgemuth (vōl'-ga-möt), 1434-1519

Albrecht Dürer (dü'-rer), 1471-1528

UNICH, with its magnificent gallery so rich in many masterpieces, is far in advance of any other collection in the works of the great Nuremberg artist, Dürer, very few of whose pictures are to be found outside of Germany. Born in the old Frankish city, he first learned the goldsmith's art with his father, and then in 1486 became the pupil of Wolgemuth, whose portrait thirty years later he painted. Four years with this excellent master were followed by four years of a wandering apprenticeship after the fashion of the artisans of his day, in the German cities and in Italy.

His remaining life, save some journeys, was spent in Nuremberg, where he developed a great activity as a painter, an engraver, and a designer of wood engravings, which were cut for him and with which he carried on a business, more lucrative, doubtless, than his pictures. He was a splendid draughtsman, of rich and fruitful fancy, expert with all the tools of his various arts, and a good worker in metals.

Dürer is notable for the vivid clearness and rich variety of his artistic conceptions, fanciful or profound, his accurate design, and his careful yet strong and impressive execution. He succeeded better with single figures, naïvely conceived and carried out with a fidelity which sometimes shuts out beauty, but not deep feeling, and an attractiveness which has lasted through the centuries. Yet his greatness is more unquestioned in his engraved work, which in its field has never been surpassed.

Dürer's personality was as interesting as his works, a genial and sympathetic nature whose rich endowment came to full fruition.

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