endeavoured to guard against being credited with works he had not produced, he has been robbed of those really due to him. It is strange indeed that for several centuries the part he took in such a great work as the Sixtine Chapel should have been ignored, for it was the success of these frescoes which sufficed to establish his fame in Rome, and for some years after this we find him in full employment there. The chapel was completed in 1485, but Pintoricchio’s part was probably finished earlier, and it is at this time that most critics concur in placing his work in the church of Ara Cœli. He had commended himself to the patronage and friendship of Domenico della Rovere, brother of Pope Sixtus, and was a guest at his house in the Palazzo di SS. Apostoli, where he painted a decoration, and he was also employed at this time in the Palazzo Colonna. In the two following years, Pintoricchio was employed in the Belvedere of the Vatican by Pope Innocent VIII. He painted there the series of pictures of towns owning the papal sway, which Taja mentions as existing, though in a much injured condition, in 1750, and which was repainted under Pius VII.[5] In the years immediately following he was decorating the chapels in Santa Maria del Popolo, doing much with his own hand, but already employing assistants and superintending their share.

A document in the archives of the cathedral at Orvieto, as to which Vasari knew nothing, or was silent, dated 1492, informs us of an agreement made with the chapter to paint two evangelists and two Fathers in the cathedral. The price was to be a hundred ducats. There was a good deal of coming and going between Rome and Orvieto, and in that year he was paid fifty ducats for the portion of work done, and also began a small picture in the tribune, but fell into a violent quarrel with the ecclesiastics, who averred that the first part of the work was not painted according to agreement. Their real objection seems to have been that they were getting frightened at the quantity of gold and ultramarine employed, which was more than the chapter could afford. There was some talk of taking the work from him, and it was certainly interrupted for a time.[6] He was probably very willing to return to Rome, for a third Pope was now providing him with work,—no less a personage than Alexander VI., who, as Cardinal Borgia, had already given great encouragement to the artist in Rome, and who now entrusted Pintoricchio with the decoration of his private apartments. The quarrel with the monks at Orvieto must, however, have been made up, and he returned to finish their transept, for we find Pope Alexander writing to the Orvietans in March 1494 to beg that they will release Pintoricchio and let him come back to Rome to finish what he had begun in the Borgia rooms.

In this year the Pope remunerated him by adding to the money paid in the contracts a grant of an ample piece of land, situated at Chiugi near Perugia, at an annual rent of thirty baskets of grain.[7] The Borgia rooms could but just have been completed when, in January 1495, the Pope was driven to take refuge from the French king’s invasion of his city in the fortified castle of Sant’ Angelo. His court painter would naturally have gone with him, and when the Pope fled to Orvieto and Perugia in the summer of 1495, Pintoricchio went homewards in his train. In the next few months, an altar-piece for the monks of the monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli must have been under discussion; for in February 1496 the contract was signed for the great polyptych now in the Gallery at Perugia. The fulfilment of this contract had to await the master’s leisure; for a month later, on March 15th, he signs a fresh contract with the Orvietans for two Fathers of the church to be painted in the great chapel over the principal altar. He was to receive fifty ducats, six quarters of grain, such wine as might be necessary, and to have the use of a house, besides what gold and ultramarine he might require. The archives of the cathedral contain minute records of every payment made, and on the 15th November of that year he received the last instalment.[8] The documents contain allusions to other paintings by him, but the only traces that remain are a St. Gregory, a prophet, and two angels which have some likeness to his school or his followers.

In 1497 we have a deed, issued October 24th, commuting the tax levied upon the painter’s grant of land. In this is recited and set forth Pintoricchio’s complaint that the tax is too heavy, and that it swallows up all the revenues. The claim is admitted to be well founded on the part of “a faithful and devoted servant of Alexander and the Church, to whom a recompense is due for his art in painting and adorning the apostolic palace and our residence in arc castri Angeli.” Instead of the grain, a yearly tax of two pounds of white wax was adjudged on July 28th, to be paid on the Feast of the Assumption, for two years, by decree of the Cardinal Camerlengo.[9] A further endorsement shows that the municipal authorities were inclined to ignore the papal decree; but a third brief, in May 1498, confirms the tenure of the land and tenements, and in February 1499 the first commutation is extended for a further term. After all these gracious concessions, it is surprising to find the tax-gatherers in the same year again trying to exact the condoned thirty baskets. Pintoricchio once more appealed to the Pontiff, with whom he was in high favour, and Alexander ordered that restitution should be made in effects or money, according to the price at which grain was valued on the Piazza in Perugia on the first Saturday in August; and in September we find Pintoricchio receiving of the vice-treasurer, Bonifazio Coppi, eighty florins in return for the tax extorted in opposition to the papal behest.