La Resurrección de San Francesco al Prato

Perugino took this commission in 1499 for the church of San Francesco al Prato in Perugia, finishing it a year or two later. He was then one of the most in-demand painters in Italy, running a workshop so busy he reused forms to keep pace. The two angels flanking the risen Christ come from the same drawing, reversed. Christ steps from the tomb holding the banner of the Resurrection while soldiers below sleep or start awake in their 15th-century armour. A tempting old tradition holds that a teenage Raphael, then training in this very shop, painted part of it, though most scholars now doubt he did more than watch. The panel left Perugia long ago and now hangs among the popes' pictures in the Vatican.