Mary with Child and Four Saints

1493 was an uneasy year in Florence. Lorenzo de' Medici had died the spring before, the friar Savonarola was drawing crowds at San Marco, and within 18 months a French army would march through the city and the Medici would be driven out of it. Perugino, then the most sought-after painter in Italy, was keeping workshops in two places at once and moving between Florence and Perugia to stay ahead of his commissions. What he produced that year is his steadiest arrangement: the Virgin enthroned under a canopy, two saints standing on each side, Peter and Paul with the two Johns, all of them lit evenly and weighted equally, holding themselves like ancient philosophers. The panel was in the collection of Cardinal Giovan Carlo de' Medici by 1646, and hanging in the imperial gallery in Vienna before 1796.