| Perugino Painter Perugino may have been a pupil of Piero della Francesca late in the 1460s, after which he went to Florence and probably worked in theshop of Verrocchio, where in the early 1470s Leonardo was also active. Hewas in Rome in 1479 and is recorded in the 1481 contract for the frescoes inthe Sistine Chapel (along with Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Cosimo Rosselli), where his Charge to St Peter demonstrates his qualities of simplicity, order andclearly articulated composition. He seems to have been the leader of the team. The influence of his friend Signorelli strengthened his draughtsmanship, thatof Flemings like Memlinc suggested the landscape background for his portraitsas well as their general composition, and to the persistence of Piero's influence is due the use of architectural and landscape settings for his figure compositions.The Pieta (Florence, Accad.) set centrally in a receding arcade, and above allthe Crucifixion with Saints (Florence, S.M. Maddalena de' Pazzi), a fresco of1496 with an extensive landscape linking the three apparent divisions, of thewall, are perfect examples of his quiet, pietistic art, with gentle, rather sentimentalfigures with drooping postures, tip-tilted heads, and mild rounded faces type he repeated all his life with, in his later years, dull and routine repetitiveness. From c.1500 to c.1504 Raphael was a pupil in his shop and may have helpedwith the fresco cycle in the Sala del Cambio at Perugia, Perugino's largest (butnot best) work in fresco. Raphael's own early work in S. Severo at Perugiawas later- after his death in 1520 - completed by his master. In 1506 Perugino retired to Perugia, since his style was now hopelessly outmoded in Florence,where, however, it had served to counter-balance the confusion of late Quattrocento style. It was to be the herald of the High Renaissance. Apart from Rome, Florence and Perugia there are works by him in Baltimore,Brussels, Cambridge, Cerquetonr Perugia (the earliest work, of 1478), Chicago,Detroit, Edinburgh, Frankfurt, Liverpool, London (NG), Lyons, Munich,Nancy, New York (Met. Mus.), Paris (Louvre), Philadelphia and Vienna. The rarest Perugino items out there @ ebay.com Source: The Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists (Penguin Reference Books) BOOK Affiliate/Advertising policy. Leonardo Giovanni Bellini prints @ amazon.co.uk (direct link to his prints) Affiliate/Advertising policy. Book Must Read: |
