Saint Philip Benizi

For a long time this friar went under the wrong name. He was taken for Saint Nicholas of Tolentino, a friar of the Augustinian order, and the old frame still carries a plaque with that name. The museum now identifies him as Philip Benizi, the Florentine friar who led the Servites, the order of the Servants of Mary, in the 13th century.

In 1953 the art historian Federico Zeri gave it to Perugino and recognised it as part of the great high altarpiece of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence, the Servites' own church, which Perugino worked on between 1505 and 1507. At that time Philip was not yet a saint. He was canonised only in 1671. Since the later 1400s the Servites had been promoting the blessed of their order, and putting him on their high altar belonged to that campaign.

The open book in his hands carries a Latin line from the Psalms, I am your servant, and the son of your handmaid. In 1546, when the altarpiece was refitted, the panel was moved and cut down at the bottom, though it stayed in the church until the whole structure was dismantled in 1654. It came to the state with the gift of the Torlonia collection in 1892.