Retable de Fano

By 1497 Pietro Perugino was one of the most sought-after painters in Italy, running a workshop so busy that he shuttled between Florence, Perugia and Rome to keep up with commissions. This altarpiece went to the Observant Franciscan friars who had just moved into the new church of Santa Maria Nuova in Fano. Perugino gives them the Madonna enthroned above a soft Umbrian landscape of low hills, ringed by saints, John the Baptist in his camel skin, Francis quietly reading, Peter with his keys. He signed and dated the base, as he did on work that left his shop. Several scholars think the small predella scenes below, telling the life of the Virgin, were painted by a teenager then learning in that workshop, Raphael, who had grown up not far away in Urbino.