Virgem com o Menino

This little panel was for a long time given to another painter entirely, catalogued as a Pollaiuolo before scholars settled on the young Perugino, around 1470. He was in his early twenties then, training in the Florence workshop of Andrea Verrocchio at the same time as Sandro Botticelli. That shared apprenticeship shows: the pose of the Child echoes a Verrocchio model both young men copied. What sets Perugino apart is what he took from the North. Look at the jewels at the Virgin's neck and the soft, hazy landscape behind her, the careful glint of light on metal. That fascination with Flemish detail was unusual in Florentine painting, and it is one of the earliest signs of the Umbrian sweetness Perugino would later pass on to his own pupil, Raphael.