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Pietro Perugino

Pietro Perugino

1448–1523 · Papal States · Umbrian school

The story

Around 1470 Pietro Perugino arrived in Florence, Italy, and joined the workshop of the sculptor and painter Andrea del Verrocchio, working alongside future rivals and colleagues including the painters Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio and, for a time, the young Leonardo da Vinci. Ten years later Pope Sixtus IV called him to Rome to help decorate the walls of a chapel newly built inside the Vatican.

That chapel was the Sistine Chapel, and Perugino led the team of Florentine and Umbrian painters brought in to fresco its side walls, decades before Michelangelo ever touched its ceiling. His scene there, Christ Handing the Keys to St Peter, painted around 1481, arranges its figures across a wide, calm piazza with clean architectural perspective, a composition later Renaissance painters studied closely.

Around 1500 a teenage painter from Urbino named Raphael entered Perugino's workshop in Perugia, a city in the Umbria region of central Italy, and absorbed that same calm, spacious style before leaving to develop it further in Florence and Rome. Perugino kept working into his seventies, painting frescoes in small Umbrian churches until his death near Perugia in 1523.

Works

71 works
Fano AltarpieceFano AltarpiecePietro Perugino, 1497Galitzin TriptychGalitzin TriptychPietro Perugino, 1481God the Father with Two SaintsGod the Father with Two SaintsPietro Perugino, 1477Madonna in Glory with SaintsMadonna in Glory with SaintsPietro Perugino, 1500Madonna with child, Saint John the Baptist, and an angelMadonna with child, Saint John the Baptist, and an angelPietro Perugino, 1495Portrait of a Young ManPortrait of a Young ManPietro Perugino, 1495Portrait of Lorenzo di CrediPortrait of Lorenzo di CrediPietro Perugino, 1488Saint SebastianSaint SebastianPietro Perugino, 1490Tezi AltarpieceTezi AltarpiecePietro Perugino, 1500Annunciation of FanoAnnunciation of FanoPietro Perugino, 1488Assumption of the VirginAssumption of the VirginPietro Perugino, 1506Baptism of ChristBaptism of ChristPietro Perugino, 1510Madonna and Child with Saints John the Evangelist and AugustineMadonna and Child with Saints John the Evangelist and AugustinePietro Perugino, 1494Madonna with childMadonna with childPietro Perugino, 1496Pala della TrasfigurazionePala della TrasfigurazionePietro Perugino, 1517Polyptych of Sant'AgostinoPolyptych of Sant'AgostinoPietro Perugino, 1502Saint SebastianSaint SebastianPietro Perugino, 1493Sansepolcro AltarpieceSansepolcro AltarpiecePietro Perugino, 1510The Nativity of the VirginThe Nativity of the VirginPietro Perugino, 1472The VisitationThe VisitationPietro Perugino, 1470Banner of JusticeBanner of JusticePietro Perugino, 1501Eternal Father with cherubim and angelsEternal Father with cherubim and angelsPietro Perugino, 1496Gonfalon with the PietàGonfalon with the PietàPietro Perugino, 1472Madonna with child and two female saintsMadonna with child and two female saintsPietro Perugino, 1493Madonna with child between Saint Herculanus and Saint ConstantiusMadonna with child between Saint Herculanus and Saint ConstantiusPietro Perugino, 1515