The Vision of Saint Bernard

Around 1489 Perugino was one of the most sought-after painters in Italy, moving between Florence and his native Perugia and turning out altarpieces faster than almost anyone. Two Florentine brothers, Bernardo and Filippo Nasi, commissioned this for their family chapel in a Cistercian church in the city. It shows Bernard of Clairvaux, the monk who founded that order, looking up from his writing desk as the Virgin Mary appears to him in the open air with a small crowd of angels. Perugino keeps everything calm and evenly lit, the figures spaced like a quiet conversation. Centuries later, in 1829, the panel was bought out of a Florentine collection for King Ludwig I of Bavaria, which is how a chapel altarpiece from Florence ended up in Munich.