THE KNEELING MAN (A detail from the "Assumption of the Virgin")]
Over the door we have "Susanna and the Elders." The middle of the composition is occupied by a splendid fountain in the style of the Renaissance. The top part, with the child holding the dolphin, resembles Verrocchio's work in the courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. The fountain is placed in a little garden plot set round with palings and a rose hedge, and the fanciful hand which painted it has filled it with animals: a hare, a stag lying down by the shoes which Susanna has just slipped off, a fawn, white rabbits gambolling in all directions, a monkey attached to a golden chain. These are evidently painted by a real student-lover of animals. In front of the fountain stands the saint, in a clinging white robe that reminds us of the sculpture of Agostino di Duccio; her feet are bare; a heavy necklace and pendant are round her throat. The two elders, in rich robes and Eastern turbans, grasp her arms on either side; but her attitude, with her hand on the shoulder of one, is free from violent emotion, calm and trustful. Pintoricchio has seldom painted a more exquisite and poetical figure than this, with fair head and delicately-modelled arms and hands. Its purity and innocence, and the subject of the legend, make it a strange choice for the private apartments of a Borgia.
[Illustration: _Anderson photo_] [_Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome_
In the background on the left, the same white figure is being hurried to execution by guards in the dress of the fifteenth century, while Daniel, mounted on a white horse and holding a sceptre, intervenes in her favour. On the other side, the elders, bound to a tree, are stoned to death, even a little figure of a child casting stones at them. These figures show a great deal of animated action and good drawing and modelling, and are full of life and spirit. Behind is a landscape in the well-known style of Pintoricchio--the whole strongly recalling the work of Fiorenzo. Bernardino here is in his most idyllic and fairy-tale vein, and nowhere is the painting more finished; but the very great care of detail, carried into the most distant part, gives too great an importance to accessories, and damages the unity of the whole, showing him less as a great composer than a decorator.