[Illustration: _Alinari photo_] [_Sta. Maria Maggiore, Spello_
THE ANNUNCIATION: WITH PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST]
The frescoes at Spoleto have been covered up for some years, as the chapel of the Duomo in which they are is undergoing restoration. They are described as ruined representations of a "Madonna and Saints," "God the Father," and a "Dead Christ." Vasari does not speak of any of the frescoes at Spello, nor are they noticed by Pascoli and his contemporaries, while Mariotti and Orsini, in the eighteenth century, say very little about them--Vermiglioli and Adamo Rossi first give a full account of them.
[Illustration: _Alinari photo_] [_Sta. Maria Maggiore, Spello_
Few painters of the fifteenth century had received so great a share of Roman patronage as Pintoricchio, and the favour now shown him, which changed the whole of his life, came from a Cardinal who had doubtless become familiar with his Roman work.
Nearly fifty years earlier, Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, son of a noble but impoverished house of Siena, had been created Pope by the title of Pius II. Before his elevation he had led a life full of stirring events--in his rise to greatness he had reinstated his exiled family and restored it to wealth and honour. Æneas was a man of unbounded ambition, and not always scrupulous in the means by which he obtained advancement, but he seems to have been a man of affectionate character and charming personality, his learning was deep and his taste highly cultivated; on the whole, he was honest and upright, while he was truly enthusiastic in his efforts to uphold the liberties of Christendom in the East against the dreaded advances of the Moslem. It is no wonder that his own family regarded him as a saint and hero. His nephew, Francesco Piccolomini, whom he had made Cardinal, and who eventually became Pope Pius III., decided, some forty-eight years after his uncle's death, to erect a great family memorial to him. In 1495 he had built the rich chapel of St. John in the nave of Siena Cathedral, and soon after set to work on a Library, into which he moved all the collections of books and MSS. left him by his kinsman. Lorenzo di Mariano, a Sienese sculptor, was entrusted with the marble work. The interior wood-carving was by Antonio Barili, and Antonio Ormanni designed the bronze doors. The interior was to be richly frescoed, and the Cardinal, recollecting the achievements of Pintoricchio in the service of three Popes, passed over the painters of Siena and summoned Messer Bernardino of Perugia to undertake the great piece of work at Siena.