Virgen en gloria con santos

Around 1500 a Bolognese man named Gabriele Scarani wanted an altarpiece for his family chapel in the church of San Giovanni in Monte, and he went to Perugino, by then one of the most sought-after painters in Italy and the master in whose workshop the teenage Raphael was learning. Perugino gave him a design he had nearly perfected: the Virgin and Child floating in a golden almond of light above, and four saints standing in a calm row on the earth below. They were chosen for the people who prayed here, the archangel Michael in decorated armour, Catherine with her spiked wheel, Apollonia holding the pincers of her martyrdom, and John the Evangelist. Behind them the hills fade into the soft hazy blue that Perugino made his own.