Itinerari Perugia

The places of the Perugino

Umbria from the artistic point of view can also be seen as a precious map that drives the visitor to the discovery of the activity of one of the most appreciated painters of the Renaissance, Pietro Vannucci said the Perugino.

In the centre of this map there's Perugia, the place that more than others preserve the traces of his passage and his work.

The "divin painter" was born in Città della Pieve, a magnificent Umbrian suburb on the lake Trasimeno. He moved his first footsteps in the outskirts of Perugia. Soon he becomes student of the Verrocchio, reaching a personal style and refined that made him already approach to his contemporaries teachers of the Tuscan art.

Among his greater works there are the decoration of the Cappella Sistina, realised with Botticelli, inside which there's one of the maximum artistic expressions of the Perugino, "la consegna delle chiavi", the "Struggle between Love and Chastity", realised for the marquise of Mantova Isabella d' Este, guarded at the Louvre.

Perugia is entirely sprinkled of the signs of art of the Perugino. We shortly review the main places that entertain his works.

Collegio del Cambio
In the 1500 Pietro Vannucci finished the decoration of Sala dell'Udienza representing the triumph of the Virtues, or the four Cardinal Virtues and the three Theological Virtues. On the ceiling is painted the triumph of the Planets, a recall to fortune, while in the pillar of the left wall there's the self-portrait of the artist.

Monastery of Sant'Agnese   
Just before his death the Perugino devotes to him the fresco guarded inside a chapel of the Monastery of the Clarisses. It represent the   "Madonna of the Graces among the Saints Anthony Abate and Anthony from Padua."

Palazzo Baldeschi
"Madonna with Child", of ownership of the Cassa di Risparmio of Perugia.

Abbazia of San Pietro
It is where is located the "Pity", a table realised in 1502 and been incomplete, was thought for constituting the superior part of the polyptych devoted to Sant'Agostino of Perugia.

In the sacristy of the abbey are preserved four tablets in which are portrayed the image of Sant'Ercolano, San Mauro, San Costanzo, San Pietro Vinicioli and Santa Scolastica.

San Severo Church
In the Church of San Severo, more precisely inside a niche, there's a work of decoration submitted in 1505 to Raffaello Sanzio. When he died, the Perugino was required to end the work, representing a theory of saints dear to the congregation of the Camaldolean monks.  

The Duomo of San Lorenzo   
Supported to the third pillar of the northern aisle there is the "Madonna of the Graces", today guarded inside a wooden neo-Gothic tabernacle dated around the halves of XIX century.

The itinerary finishes at the National Gallery of Umbria, inside which, besides entertaining frequent shows and close examinations devoted to the Perugino, a splendid masterpiece can be admired: "The adoration of the Magis". It's a painting realised by the Perugino in juvenile age, coming from the Church of Santa Maria dei Servi of Perugia. Despite is not the fruit of the fully mature Pietro Vannucci, the table openly shows already the signs that will make him an excellent protagonist of our Renaissance.