Pietro Perugino

Pietro Vannucci, known as Perugino, was an Italian Renaissance painter of the Umbrian school, working in Umbria, Florence and Rome. He is considered one of the artists who helped prepare the move towards the High Renaissance. His nickname points to Perugia, the main city of Umbria, although he was born in Città della Pieve. His fame was partly overshadowed by that of his most famous pupil, Raphael, yet his way of composing, his palette and his handling of space were decisive for painting at the start of the sixteenth century.

Origins and first training

He was born around the middle of the fifteenth century in Città della Pieve, the son of Cristoforo Vannucci. His exact birth date is unknown: based on the ages at death mentioned by Vasari and Giovanni Santi, it has been placed between 1445 and 1452. Scholars still debate the family's social standing. Some believe Vannucci rose out of poverty through his own efforts, while others argue that the Vannucci were among the wealthiest families in the town. His first experiences probably came in local Perugian workshops, such as those of Bartolomeo Caporali and Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, and in the circle of Benedetto Bonfigli.

In Perugia he could see works by Piero della Francesca, Domenico Veneziano, Fra Angelico and Benozzo Gozzoli. From Piero he took a sense of harmony between the flat surface of the picture and the volume of its figures, along with clear light and rigorous architecture. The date of his first stay in Florence is not certain: some place it around 1470, others around 1479.

Apprenticeship in Florence

According to Vasari, in Florence he worked in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, one of the most important training centres of the time, where painting, sculpture and goldsmithing were practised side by side. There he worked alongside young talents such as Leonardo da Vinci, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Lorenzo di Credi and Filippino Lippi, and with Botticelli, whom an anonymous sixteenth-century writer named, perhaps with some exaggeration, as his direct master. Florentine teaching rested on drawing from life and anatomical study, and gave great weight to the line of contours. From Verrocchio he learned a naturalism built on firm line.

According to guild statutes, an apprenticeship then lasted at least nine years. By about 1472 Perugino could work independently, and he enrolled in the Compagnia di San Luca in Florence with the title of dipintore. He is considered one of the first painters in central Italy to use oil paint, although his early chronology is largely reconstructed through stylistic comparison.

Early works in Umbria

Back in Perugia, his Florentine training is visible in the Scenes from the Life of Saint Bernardino, commissioned in 1473 by the Franciscans, who wanted to spread the cult of Bernardino of Siena. Eight small panels were painted, now scattered, by several artists. Two of the finest are attributed to Perugino: the Miracle of the Stillborn Child and, above all, Saint Bernardino Heals a Girl. In them a monumental, decorated architecture dominates the small figures, and a clear light recalls Piero della Francesca.

In 1478 he painted frescoes in the Magdalen chapel of Santa Maria Assunta at Cerqueto, of which only fragments survive. Among them is a Saint Sebastian, a subject he would return to often: a young, naked saint that allowed a male nude to be shown under a religious pretext. Versions in fresco and oil multiplied for private devotion, and the best known are in Stockholm and St Petersburg. In the Hermitage example there is only one arrow, and the inscription PETRUS PERUSINUS PINXIT, "Pietro Perugino painted this".

The same period produced many Madonnas now spread across European museums. Several were long attributed to Verrocchio, and in all of them the influences of his two great reference points blend together.

Rome and the Sistine Chapel

Around 1479 his reputation was considerable and Pope Sixtus IV called him to Rome. He painted the apse of the chapel of the Conception in the choir of St Peter's, a work destroyed in 1609 when the basilica was rebuilt. Documents describe a cycle showing the Virgin and Child in a mandorla, surrounded by saints. Its success led the pope to commission the decoration of the walls of the Sistine Chapel.

From the summer of 1481 a group of leading Florentine painters gathered there, among them Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Cosimo Rosselli, with their assistants. The works had to follow shared conventions: the same scale, a common rhythmic structure, a unified landscape and a single range of colours. Perugino's surviving contributions include the Delivery of the Keys to Saint Peter, dated 1481-82 and one of the most celebrated images on the north wall, and the Baptism of Christ, the only signed work in the whole ensemble. The architectural backdrop, with two triumphal arches and a central temple, shows close attention to detail and tight control of the composition.

Although one of the youngest in the group, Perugino soon took a leading role in directing the work. Pinturicchio collaborated with him. On the altar wall he also painted a feigned altarpiece of the Assumption, later destroyed to make room for Michelangelo's Last Judgement. His method of dividing the space into two parallel planes that barely communicate reappeared in later works, such as the Albani Torlonia Altarpiece (1491).

Florence and the Medici circle

After Rome he returned to Florence, where he worked mainly between 1486 and 1499, with trips to Rome and Perugia. He rarely had fixed assistants: he preferred to recruit locally wherever he worked, so his style sometimes adapted to its setting. His light grew softer, and his landscapes moved away from the harshness of the early works towards gentle, rolling hills that seem to belong to no particular time or place.

His solemn compositions suited the habits of visual meditation promoted by prayer books widely used at the end of the fifteenth century. His figures, with restrained expressions and refined elegance, stand in generic landscapes. His portraits, by contrast, show precise observation of features and character, such as the portrait of Francesco delle Opere of 1494, with a meticulous landscape showing Flemish influence. In 1494 he travelled to Venice, where he saw the work of Carpaccio and Giovanni Bellini.

In 1483 he took part in the decoration of the Villa di Spedaletto, near Volterra, commissioned by Lorenzo the Magnificent, alongside Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Filippino Lippi. Its mythological scenes were entirely lost. Around 1485 he painted the Galitzin Triptych. His harmonious painting suited the Neoplatonic atmosphere of Lorenzo's circle. To this period belongs the Louvre picture traditionally called Apollo and Marsyas, though it is now more often thought to show the shepherd Daphnis seated. Its figures quote classical models, such as Praxiteles' Hermes.

After Lorenzo's death and the political upheavals of the 1490s, his art kept its character without any sharp break. For the Florentine convent of the Gesuati at San Giusto he painted panels such as the Pietà, and for the Nasi family chapel he painted The Vision of Saint Bernard. In these works he began framing figures beneath a portico and using aerial perspective with tones of sea green and blue. In 1493 he married Chiara Fancelli in Florence, who according to tradition served as the model for many of his Madonnas.

Perugia and the Exchange Hall

In Perugia he left important works, such as the Decemviri Altarpiece and the polyptych of Saint Peter, which was dismantled in 1591 after the church was destroyed. His most admired work in the city, however, is the decoration of the Sala del Cambio. In 1496 the guild of money-changers and bankers commissioned him to decorate its audience hall. The humanist Francesco Maturanzio advised on the programme, which explored the harmony between pagan and Christian wisdom: a vault with the seven planets and the signs of the zodiac, the Nativity, the Transfiguration, the Eternal Father, and figures of heroes, prophets and sibyls. Perugino designed the figures, and his pupils probably carried out much of the painting. On a half-pilaster he added his own bust, with an inscription calling himself egregius pictor.

The hall shows Perugino's language at its most balanced: bright but harmonious colours, serene scenes and light broken into brushstrokes that merge into a unified effect. Its limits are also visible, in the repetition of familiar schemes and the difficulty of giving dynamism to narrative scenes.

Late years and legacy

By 1501 Perugino was one of the priors of Perugia. He faced criticism, including Michelangelo's remark that he was a goffo nell'arte, a clumsy painter. Perugino sued for defamation and lost. Shortly afterwards he painted a Madonna and Saints for the Certosa di Pavia, now dispersed among museums.

Between 1504 and 1507 he produced the Annunziata altarpiece in Florence, which was judged lacking in innovation and cost him several pupils. Around 1506 he left Florence for Perugia and then Rome, where Pope Julius II preferred Raphael for the Vatican rooms. From 1512 he withdrew to Perugia. His last frescoes, at Trevi, Perugia and Fortignano, survive only in part or have left their original locations. He died in 1523 at Fontignano, of the plague.

His legacy lies above all in Raphael, who took from him the foundations of perspective and composition, and in the Umbrian school, which spread a painting of clear forms, calm figures and harmonious landscapes that formed a basis for the move towards the High Renaissance.