Kreuzigung Christi mit Heiligen

Perugino painted this in Florence in the mid-1480s, just after he had come back from Rome, where he was one of the masters called in to fresco the walls of the new Sistine Chapel. You can feel that confidence here in the calm, wide landscape and the figures spaced with almost mathematical evenness beneath the cross. It was made for the convent of the Gesuati, a Florentine order, and hung over a doorway there. Vasari later singled it out for the infinite care Perugino had taken. Among the saints is Giovanni Colombini, the merchant who had founded the Gesuati by giving away his fortune. When the convent was pulled down in 1529 during the siege of Florence, the panel moved on, reaching the Uffizi in 1905.