The Successes of Pintoricchio and the Problems of Vasari. Fortune and Reputation of an Umbrian Painter in Rome on the Threshold of the High Renaissance

Ever since Giorgio Vasari’s Vite was published, Pintoricchio has been considered a minor painter from the Early Renaissance, in spite of the prominence that he enjoyed during his lifetime. This paper argues that Vasari’s assessment sprang from anachronistic criteria: Pintoricchio’s style and his use of gold; from Vassari’s own personal frustrations in having to work with a large crew of assistants to be able to execute large projects, as did Pintoricchio; and from his partisan view that art either came from or was done in Florence. These criteria ensured that Pintoricchio, as a painter from Umbria who was very successful in Rome before c. 1500, did not fit into Vasari’s scheme, according to which the arts in Rome started to bloom only after Julius II became pope in 1503 and artists such as Bramante, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael — for the most part coming from Florence — reached the level of perfection. Vasari dealt a further blow to Pintoricchio by describing him as a morally despicable person and linking him to patrons without any real understanding of the arts, notably the “depraved” Pope Alexander VI Borgia. However, Pintoricchio’s works were highly appreciated during his own life and contain many elements that anticipate developments made in Rome after 1503. This puts Vasari’s judgment into question and raises doubts about the validity of when the terms “Early” and “High Renaissance” can be placed.