Retábulo dos Decênviros

The Decemviri were the ten men who governed the city of Perugia, and around 1495 they commissioned this altarpiece for the chapel inside their town hall, the Palazzo dei Priori. Perugino was the obvious choice, the leading painter of the region and soon the teacher of the young Raphael. He set the Virgin and Child on a high throne with four saints who were the city's own protectors standing guard, a bright Umbrian landscape of soft hills opening behind them. The painting never made it back to Perugia. Napoleon's troops carried it off to Paris, and when the seized art was returned after 1815 this panel was kept in Rome instead. It has hung in the Vatican's collection ever since.