Il battesimo di Cristo

Around 1499 Perugino was one of the most sought-after painters in Italy, running busy shops in both Florence and his native Perugia. He had already worked on the walls of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and this small panel repeats, in miniature, the calm Baptism composition he had developed there. It is painted on a little board of olive wood, barely a foot tall. What Perugino was after here was less the story than the light. He was among the first Central Italian painters to take up the layered oil glazing of the Netherlanders and Venetians, building up the pale sky and the still water so they seem to hold real air. In his workshop at just this time was a teenager from Urbino named Raphael, who was watching closely.