The story
Before he became Pope Leo XIII, Gioacchino Pecci spent 32 years as bishop of Perugia, and one of the halls of the cathedral's chapter museum carries his name. The museum, also known as the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, runs through rooms around the cloister of San Lorenzo and down into spaces beneath the cathedral. The canons began recovering and gathering its treasures in 1923, and a new display opened in February 2023 for the centenary.
Its best-known picture is Luca Signorelli's altarpiece of Saint Onuphrius, dated 1484 and the only work by Signorelli in the city. It was paid for by Bishop Jacopo Vagnucci, who like the painter came from Cortona. The Virgin sits enthroned with the hermit Onuphrius, Herculanus, one of Perugia's patron saints, and other saints around her, while an angel at the foot of the throne tunes a lute.
Other rooms hold paintings by Bartolomeo Caporali and Benedetto Bonfigli, two 15th-century Perugian painters, and marble pieces of an altar that the sculptor Agostino di Duccio carved for the cathedral in 1473 and 1474, reassembled here.
