São João Evangelista e Santo Agostinho

This panel began as part of one of Perugino's largest undertakings, a double-sided altarpiece for the church of Sant'Agostino in his home city of Perugia. He took on the commission around 1502 and the work dragged on for some 20 years, into the last decade of his life. Here two saints stand side by side, John the Evangelist and Augustine, calm and evenly lit in the gentle manner that made Perugino one of the most sought-after painters in Italy, and that his young pupil Raphael absorbed. The altarpiece was broken up in 1683. Then in the 1790s French troops sweeping through Italy carried off several panels, which is how this one came to rest in a museum in Toulouse.