Crucifixion of Christ

Perugino finished this for the Franciscan church at Monteripido, just outside Perugia, in 1502. It was made to stand behind an older wooden crucifix, so the painted figures grieve around a real cross that once rose in front of them. By this date Perugino ran a large and efficient workshop, and he built the picture partly from drawings he already owned, reusing the mourners from an earlier crucifixion of his and turning the angels who catch Christ's blood in cups from figures in another work. That habit was not simple laziness. His calm, balanced groupings were so admired that a young painter from nearby Urbino was studying them closely, and Raphael's own Crucifixion of the following year borrows this very arrangement.