Bannière de la Justice

This was made to be carried, not hung. It is a gonfalon, a processional banner, painted in 1501 for the Confraternity of Justice, a lay brotherhood in Perugia in central Italy. Perugino was then at the height of his fame, splitting his time between Florence and his home region of Umbria. He fills the cloth with the Madonna and Child among angels, Saint Francis and Saint Bernardino kneeling below, and between them, small in the distance, a view of Perugia itself. Around that skyline he sets the townspeople on their knees, the men on one side, the women on the other, and the confraternity's own members in their white hooded habits.