Madonna and Crucifixion and Saints
Pinturicchio, 1496
The Santa Maria dei Fossi altarpiece was commissioned from Pinturicchio for the high altar of the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Perugia, also known as Santa Maria dei Fossi. The contract, dated February 1496, sets out how the work and its wooden frame should be made, the frame imitating the architecture of the church façade. The painter was then at the height of his reputation as a favourite of Pope Alexander VI. Its technique is unusual for an altarpiece: the image was painted on canvas stretched over wooden panels. In the central panel, the Virgin and Child, with the young John the Baptist, appear before a landscape of Umbria, with a pomegranate and scattered fruit alluding to the Passion, and an Italian inscription that foreshadows the sacrifice. The side panels show Augustine and Jerome, with an apple and a model of a church as their attributes. The work was split up after the church was suppressed under Napoleonic rule and was not reassembled until 1853. Twentieth-century critics admired its lightness and luminous colour, though they placed it at a transitional stage in the painter's career. The figure of the Virgin served as a model for simpler versions made for private devotion.
- Painter
- Pinturicchio
- Date
- 1496
- Dimensions
- 513 × 314 cm
- Museum
- National Gallery of Umbria, Perugia
- Genre
- religious art
- Depicts
- boy, Mary, woman, Christ Child
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