O Batismo de Cristo

Perugino painted this Baptism in 1510 for the cathedral of Citta della Pieve, the small Umbrian town where he was born. By then he was an old master in both senses. Nearly 30 years earlier he had been among the painters summoned to Rome to decorate the Sistine Chapel, where he set down a Baptism of Christ on its wall, and he had taught the young Raphael. Now fashion had moved past him toward Rome and Florence, and critics of his late work grumble that he kept reaching for the same cartoons, the same calm symmetrical figures. Here Christ and John the Baptist stand facing each other in the Jordan, the water at their ankles and a white dove above. The panel still hangs in his birthplace, in the cathedral chapel dedicated to the Baptist.