Pietro Perugino Paintings

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Pietro Perugino Biography

Italian Renaissance painter, draftsman and illuminator
born circa 1445 - died 1523
Born in: Città della Pieve (Perugia, Umbria, Italy).
Died in: Fontignano (Perugia, Umbria, Italy)

Also known as: Pedro Perugeno, Pierre Pérugin, ......

Collaborated with: Bernardino Pinturicchio (c.1454-1513) from 1450 to 1523.

PERUGINO, PIETRO (1446-1524), whose correct family name was VANNUCCI, Italian painter, was born in 1446 at Citta della Pieve in Umbria, and belongs to the Umbrian school of painting.

Gradually Perugino rose into notice, and became famous not only throughout Italy but even beyond. Pietro Perugino was one of the earliest Italian artists to practise oil painting, in which he evinced a depth and smoothness of tint, which elicited much remark; and in perspective Pietro Perugino artist applied the novel rule of two centres of vision. Some of early Pietro Perugino paintings were extensive frescoes for the Ingesati fathers in their convent, which was destroyed not many years afterwards in the course of the siege of Florence; Pietro Perugino produced for them also many cartoons, which they executed with brilliant effect in stained glass.

He returned from Florence to Perugia, and thence, towards 1483, the artist went to Rome. The Pietro Perugino painting of that part of the Sistine Chapel which is now immortalized by Michelangelo's Last Judgment was assigned to him by the pope; he covered it with frescoes of the Assumption, the Nativity, and Moses in the Bulrushes. These Pietro Perugino paintings were ruthlessly destroyed to make a space for his successors more colossal genius, but other Pietro Perugino works still remain in the Sistine Chapel; Moses and Zipporah (often attributed to Signorelli), the Baptism of Christ, and Christ giving the Keys to Peter. Pinturicchio accompanied the greater Umbrian to Rome, and was made his partner, receiving a third of the profits; Pietro Perugino may probably have done some of the Zipporah subject.

From about 1498 he became increasingly keen after money, frequently repeating his groups from picture to picture, and leaving much of Pietro Perugino painting to journeymen. In 1499 the guild of the cambio (money-changers or bankers) of Perugia asked him to undertake the decoration of their audience-hall, and Pietro Perugino artist accepted the invitation. This extensive scheme of painting, which may have been finished within the year 1500, comprised the Pietro Perugino painting of the vault with the seven planets and the signs of the zodiac (he doing the designs and his. pupils most probably the executive work) and the representation on the walls of two sacred subjects: the Nativity and Transfiguration the Eternal Father, the four virtues of Justice, Prudence, Temperance and Fortitude, Cato as the emblem of wisdom, and (in life size) numerous figures of classic worthies, prophets and sibyls. On the mid-pilaster of the hall Perugino placed his own portrait in bust-form. It is probable that Raphael, who in boyhood, towards 1496, had been placed by his uncles under the tuition of Perugino, bore a hand in the Pietro Perugino painting of the vaulting. It may have been about this time (though some accounts date the event a few years later) that Vannucci married a young and beautiful wife, the object of his fond affection; Pietro Perugino artist loved to see her handsomely dressed, and would often deck her out with his own hands. The painter was made one of the priors of Perugia in 1501.

Pope Julius II had summoned Perugino to paint the Stanza in the Vatican, now called that of the Incendio del Borgo; but Pietro Perugino soon preferred a younger competitor, that very Raphael who had been trained by the aged master of Perugia; and Vannucci, after Pietro Perugino painting the ceiling with figures of God the Father in different glories, in five medallion-subjects, found his occupation gone; the artist retired from Rome, and was once more in Perugia from 1512. Among latest Pietro Perugino works one of the best is the extensive altar-piece (painted between 1512 and 1517) of S. Agostino in Perugia; the component parts of it are now dispersed in various galleries.

Among the very numerous Pietro Perugino paintings a few not already named require mention. Towards 1496 Pietro Perugino painted the Crucifixion, in S. Maria Maddalena del Pazzi, Florence. The attribution to him of the picture of the marriage of Joseph and the Virgin Mary (the Sposalizio) now in the museum of Caen, which served indisputably as the original, to a great extent, of the still more famous Sposalizio which was painted by Raphael in 1504, and which forms a leading attraction of the Brera Gallery in Milan, is now questioned, and itis assigned to Lo Spagna.

A vastly finer Pietro Perugino work is the Ascension of Christ, which, painted a littler earlier for S. Pietro of Perugia, has for years past been in the museum of Lyons; the other portions of the same altar-piece are dispersed in other galleries. In the chapel of the Disciplinati of Citta della Pieve is an Adoration of the Magi, a square of 21 ft. containing about thirty life-sized figures; this was executed, with scarcely credible celerity, from the 1st to the 25th of March (or thereabouts) in 1505, and must no doubt be in great part the painting of Vannucci's pupils. In 1507, when the masters work had for years been in a course of decline and his performances were generally weak, Pietro Perugino produced, nevertheless, one of his best; pictures the Virgin between St Jerome and St Francis, now in the Palazzo Penna. In S. Onofrio of Florence is a much lauded and much debated fresco of the Last Supper, a careful and blandly correct but not inspired work; it has been ascribed to Pietro Perugino artist by some connoisseurs, by others to Raphael; it may more probably be by some different pupil of the Umbrian master.