Panicale

Two marvellous paintings of the '' divin painter '', among which detaches the '' Martyrdom of San Sebastiano '', real masterpiece of the Renaissance art

It would be worth to stop in Panicale knowing that a fresco of the Perugino is there. Think about two! Pietro Vannucci has left the sign of his passage giving two paintings to the city of Panicale that make notice his genius. Of rare grace and beauty it is the fresco of the Perugino preserved in the Church of San Sebastiano, representing the martyrdom of the saint pierced through by the arrows of four archers. Very complex, but at the same time airy, is the spatial disposition of the elements. The archers that strike the body of the saint from the lower part seem to stir in harmonious way, conferring entirely to the martyrdom an abstract character and not at all passionate. The buyers intended to realise a work that held away from the city the ghost of the plague, being San Sebastiano believed as powerful defence against the disease and every sort of epidemic. The fresco has been painted from the Perugino in 1505 and it brings its signature in the central part of the pedestal, above which San Sebastiano is set and receives the arrows.

A second fresco of the Perugino is preserved in the church that entertains the '' Martyrdom of St. Sebastiano '', the '' The Crowning of the virgin '' of 1490.

The painting of the Perugino serves as background an unique and inimitable panorama, where valleys and hills follow in an admirable sequence of curves and slopes from the unmistakable character. In this environmental complex of rare beauty emerges Panicale and its ancient suburb, an unchanged place inside which nothing changes and nothing transforms. The laws of the time seem to not have power on historical buildings and city monuments, castled in slant around the main square, today meeting point just as once. The particular nature of its urban sketch confers to the town an undisputed charm, while the architectural solutions are perfectly integrated with the steep nature of the territory. Squares, roads, houses and buildings seem to abandon on the hill following its profile, adapting themselves to every kind of asperity and relief, giving a very personal physiognomy to the city. On the summit of the suburb it opens a small square from which is possible to enjoy the ample panorama that extends along the whole underlying valley, giving an incomparable beautiful foreshortening. Panicale is the proper place for who seeks peace and serenity in an entire and native landscape celebrated in sublime way in the backgrounds of Perugino's frescos.