Retable de Tezi

By 1500 Perugino was one of the most sought-after painters in Italy, running workshops in both Florence and Perugia and repeating his gentle, balanced figures across dozens of commissions. This altarpiece was ordered by a Perugian notary named Bernardino Tezi for his family chapel, and Perugino signed and dated it 1500 in the hem of the Virgin's robe, along with the patron's name. He worked efficiently. For Mary he reused a drawing he had already used in another picture, and set four saints in calm symmetry around her. What lifts the panel is the country behind them, a soft landscape of hills, a lake and a little town of towers, painted in the hazy Umbrian light that a young member of his workshop, Raphael, would soon carry out into the wider world.