not then customary, gave considerable satisfaction. In the same place, Pinturicchio painted a figure of the Virgin in fresco, over the principal door.[1]
In San Pietro, for the chapel wherein the spear which pierced the side of Christ is preserved, Pinturicchio painted a picture in tempera, by command of Pope Innocent VIII., being a figure of the Virgin, larger than life:[2] and in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, he painted two chapels, one for the above-named Domenico della Rovere, cardinal of vSan Clemente, in which he w^as buried,[3] and the other, for the Cardinal Innocenzio Cibo, wherein he also was afterwards interred.[4] In each of these chapels was placed the portrait of the cardinal, who had caused it to be adorned with paintings. In the palace of the Pope, Pinturicchio painted certain apartments which look upon the Court of St. Peter, the wood work and paintings of which were renewed some few years since by Pope Pius IV. In the same palace. Pope Alexander VI. caused Pinturicchio to decorate all the rooms inhabited by himself, together with the whole of the Torre Borgia, where the artist painted stories of the liberal arts in one of the rooms, and adorned all the ceilings with ornaments in stuccowork and gold:[5] but the methods now practised in stucco were not known at that time, and the above-mentioned ornaments are for the most part ruined. Over the door of one of the rooms in the same palace, Pinturicchio portrayed the Signora Giulia Farnese in the face of a Madonna; and in the same picture is a figure in adoration of the Virgin, the head of which is a portrait of Pope Alexander. Bernardino was much in the habit of decorating his pictures with ornaments in relief covered with gold, for the
- ↑ Bottari declares these paintings to. have greatly suffered in his time (1759); a pai-ticular description of them will be found in Taja, who wrote about ten years before Bottari,—See his Descrizione del Palazzo Vaticano. The pictures were restored under Pope Pius VII.
- ↑ This work is lost.
- ↑ The paintings of this chapel are still in existence, and are admired for the delicacy of the execution.
- ↑ The chapel of the Cibo family having been enlarged and encrusted with marbles, in 1700, by the Cardinal Alexander Cibo, these paintings were destroyed.
- ↑ The rooms painted by Pinturicchio were three; they were cleaned and restored by command of Pope Pius VII., and are now therefore ngiiin made visible.— Masselli.
