Saint John the Baptist; Saint Lucy

These two saints once stood on the sides of an enormous altarpiece for the high altar of Santissima Annunziata, one of the most important churches in Florence. The commission had gone first to Filippino Lippi, and when he died in 1504 Perugino took it over and finished it around 1507. That was an awkward moment to be Perugino in Florence. He had been the most sought-after painter in Italy a decade earlier, but the city now belonged to Leonardo, to the young Michelangelo, and to Perugino's own former pupil Raphael. When the finished altar went up, Florentines complained that they had seen these poses and these faces before. Vasari reports the painter's flat reply, that he had used the very figures they used to praise. Saint John and Saint Lucy show exactly the calm, balanced formula they meant, each set in its own quiet niche.