PERUGINO

Perugino: translation

Nickname for Pietro Vannucci (ca. 1450-1523), an Um-brian painter who began his training with the conservative school of painters active in Perugia but was early subjected to Florentine influ-ence by an apprenticeship toAndrea del Verrocchio; he also studied withPiero della Francesca. He is especially admired for the high quality of his drawings. By 1472 Perugino had become a member of the Company of Saint Luke, a confraternity of painters atFlorence, but that same year he moved back to Perugia. Of his early works,Christ Giving the Keys to St.Peter(1482), painted in the Sistine Chapel atRomefor PopeSixtus IV, is the best known. Perugino also worked at Florence, where he paintedLamentation over the Dead Christ(1495) in the Pitti Palace, and one of his most admired works was a series of frescoes in the Collegio del Cambio at Perugia (1496-1500). He seems to have passed out of fashion late in his ca-reer; hisCombat Between Love and Chastity(1505) displeasedIs-abella d'Este, the patron who commissioned it, and the plan to paint a ceiling in the Vatican apartments of PopeJulius IIfell through be-cause thepopehad become more interested in Perugino's most fa-mous pupil,Raphael.