God the Father with Two Saints

This was made against the plague. Around 1477 the young Pietro Perugino, not long back in his native Umbria after training in Florence, painted it for the town of Deruta, where an epidemic had been tearing through the countryside near Perugia. The two saints standing below God the Father are Rocco and Romano, both called on for protection from disease, Rocco especially, the pilgrim saint invoked in almost every plague town in Italy. It may have been set up in thanks once the sickness passed. Beneath the figures the painter tucked in a small, careful view of Deruta itself, its buildings laid out on the hillside, one of the earliest recognisable portraits of the real town.