The Visitation

On 29 March 1493 Pope Alexander VI wrote to the people of Orvieto that work on their cathedral would have to stop, because the painter they had hired, Pinturicchio, was now needed in the papal apartment. That letter is one of the few firm dates for these rooms, which were finished with remarkable speed, between the autumn of 1492 and early 1494. Speed called for a large team and for a particular way of painting. Restorers have found that only part of the work is true fresco. Much of the colour was laid on dry plaster, which was quicker, allowed a wider range of pigments, and let Pinturicchio go over his assistants' work and correct it where he needed to.

This lunette shows Mary visiting her older kinswoman Elizabeth. Both are expecting a child, Elizabeth the future John the Baptist. She opens the room's cycle of seven saints, which runs on through hermits of the desert and martyrs to the biblical Susanna.