[Illustration: _Anderson photo_] [_Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome_
Dr. Auguste Schmarsow, of all the critics, is the one who has given most careful study to these frescoes and has brought most knowledge and erudition to bear upon them. He divides a great deal of the execution among the various schools to which he thinks Pintoricchio's assistants belonged, and his assignments, if not to be taken as actual facts, are worth considering--it being allowed that the whole is due to one designer. All critics concur in giving the figures in the "Annunciation" to the master. In the next, the "Nativity," the Virgin and Child are also from Pintoricchio's own hand, and many details recall the altar-piece in Santa Maria del Popolo. The "Adoration of the Magi" is attributed to a Lombard, except the boy at the right, who is by a pupil of Botticelli. We should be sorry to hold Pintoricchio immediately responsible for the ill-drawn Child and awkward hands in this fresco; and in the patterns on the dresses and the terra-cotta mouldings of the buildings we see the Lombard taste. In the "Resurrection" we have the broken tomb, the risen Saviour, and the guards in armour, set in a landscape of rocky ground and cypresses.
The principal figure, upon a gilded glory, set round with cherubs' heads and tongues of flame and grasping a banner, is far too ill-drawn for the master, and Schmarsow gives it entirely to a Lombard. The guards are all of a refined Umbrian type, full of spirit and intelligence, and Dr. Steinmann suggests that we may have here portraits of Cæsar Borgia and his brother, who at the time would be boys of seventeen and eighteen. It is, as he argues, difficult to say what other portraits (and that they are portraits is evident) would be allowed in the same scene with that of the donor, Pope Alexander himself, who kneels on the left hand, the most conspicuous figure of the whole group, clothed in a gorgeous mantle, embossed with gold, his hands raised in prayer. His face has a strong beaked nose, low forehead, heavy jowl, double chin and crafty eye, and the tonsure shows the unusual development of the back of the skull. It is a splendidly realistic portrait, full of strength and truth, and clever modelling of the heavy fleshy face. This is entirely by Pintoricchio, who naturally would not leave such an important detail to any inferior hand. It is in unconscious satire that the Pope raises his clasped hands and eyes to the figure of the risen Lord, and that the inscription is to be read--like a sentence from the Judgment Seat--"I wait for my resurrection." These figures, in contrast to some of the puppet-like ones in the two preceding frescoes, are full of life, vivid and solid. In "The Ascension," painted on the archway over the window, the figure of Christ is the same in attitude if not in drapery. The whole is feebly drawn, and the gestures of the Apostles show a great want of unity. In this composition Schmarsow sees an imitation of Melozzo da Forli, while the heads and drapery are of the school of the Sienese, Bernardino Fungai, and by the same hand as the prophets on the roof nearest the window.