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Pietro Perugino Biography
Italian Renaissance painter, draftsman &
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, Pietro Perugini, Pedro Perugino,
Pietro da Perugia, Pedro Peruggino, Pietro
Pérugin, Pietro di Cristoforo di Vannucci
Perugino, Pietro Vannucci Perugino, Pedro
Perujeno, Pietro di Cristoforo Vannucci. |
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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. |
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