We can guess that the Turks made a great impression on Pintoricchio, for he brings them in again to his frescoes fifteen years later at Siena. The Emperor has been said to be a portrait of Cæsar Borgia; but as he was only eighteen or nineteen at the time, this seems impossible. The young man on horseback on the right, tradition names as Giovanni Sforza, who was about twenty.
Here, too, is another portrait, less splendid but as notable as any. In the corner on our left may be seen the slim form and thin dark face, sensitive and observant, of the little painter himself, and by his side a man with a shrewd, firm face, with a grand gold chain round his shoulders and holding an architect's square in his hand. This is no doubt one of the sculptors or decorators of the rooms. It may be Bramante, or the elder San Gallo, or Andrea Bregno, that conjuror in marble.
The ceiling in this room is a marvel of richly-gilt and embossed stucco, mingled with painting. The eight large triangular spaces between the bars of framework illustrate the myth of Osiris and Isis which, with its history of the deification of the bull, appropriately symbolises the exaltation of the House of Borgia. The young King Osiris, having conquered Egypt, ploughs the land with bulls and teaches the Egyptian to plant orchards and vineyards. The peace and prosperity of his rule is crowned by his marriage with Isis. Warriors pile their useless armour and children play around their knees. In this segment one particularly delightful _putto_ is riding astride of a swan, the original for which, in marble, had been among the recent discoveries of antiques. As the history proceeds, the wicked brother raises the Egyptians in mutiny and Isis finds the remains of her murdered husband. Isis is a graceful fantastic figure, with swathing draperies, and the cut-up hands and legs of the unfortunate Osiris are disposed about the ground with a very naïve effect. Then we have his burial, wrapped in cloth of gold--the pyramid erected to him, and his apparition deified in the form of the famous bull Apis, ending with a procession and the bull borne in triumph. The intervals are lavishly filled in with grotesques, which are here very marked in character. It is curious to note Pintoricchio's study of the antique, the classic armour, and the mythical histories in the small _tondi_ on the wide cross architrave--Mercury soothing Argus to sleep, and then slaying him at Jove's command. Jove seizing Io, and obtaining possession of the cow into which her friend was transformed. The design of the principal subjects is in Pintoricchio's style and full of fancy and invention, but the execution would seem to have been entrusted to assistants, apparently to the same hand which worked on the archers round St. Sebastian and in parts of the Susanna.