Pietro Vannucci, called Perugino

by George C. Williamson

Vasari states that it was to Verrocchio that he went. Lanzi and Orsini confirm this; Morelli gravely doubts it; Resta distinctly denies it; Berenson rejects it; and certainly there is but little trace of such a tutor in Perugino's work.

In the "Baptism" at the Accademia, which is an absolutely authentic picture, although perhaps partly the work of Leonardo, and in the "Madonna and Child" in the Uffizi, also attributed to Verrocchio, we find nothing that would appear to have influenced Perugino, or that can be recalled by his work, but if the magnificent bronze panel in the Carmine Church at Venice is accepted as the work of Andrea del Verrocchio then there is evidently a feeling in this work such as Perugino would naturally have appreciated, and which does appear many times in pictures by the Umbrian master. The position of the Christ on the ground, and that of the women who bend over Him, the silent meditative devotion of the two men and of the child who kneel on the right, the attitude, wings, drapery, and movement of the flying angels, and their very position with regard to the cross, all find answering echoes in Perugino's work that are unmistakable in their clearness. What is, however, of special importance to notice at this juncture is that Perugino did not go to Florence in 1472 as a mere pupil or scholar. Young in years as he undoubtedly was, he must have also been mature in experience and in knowledge; for otherwise it is inconceivable that so sagacious a Pontiff as Sixtus IV. should have sent for him eight years afterwards and engaged him upon work in the Sistine Chapel.

Vasari specially states that the invitation was given because of Perugino's great fame throughout Italy, and it is clear that a request to work side by side with such men as Ghirlandajo, Cosimo Rosselli, and Botticelli was so high a compliment that it would not be given to one who was merely a student in Verrocchio's botega. There is no question about the date of this invitation, as the original contract between the Holy Father and the artists has been published, and it contains an undertaking to furnish "ten stories" between October 27, 1481, and March 15, 1482.

Prior to these dates we hear of two other works executed by Perugino. The earliest of all is recorded by Milanesi in his notes to the life in Vasari. He states that in 1475 Perugino was commissioned to paint certain frescoes in the Palazzo Publico in Perugia; but of these works not a trace remains, and there is no evidence to support the learned author's statement[D] Milanesi, moreover, further records the fact that in 1478 Perugino worked at Cerqueto, painting some frescoes in a chapel there, and one solitary figure of "San Sebastian" bearing that date only now remains out of the entire decoration.

Private photo] [Cerqueto

SAINT SEBASTIAN, 1478

To this interesting figure, the earliest known work of the master, a reference will be made later on when consideration is given to other representations of the same saint, but a record must here be made to the Foligno, and to the Signorelli influence that this figure betrays. In direct truth the figure might well be the work of Niccolò Liberatore, and is conceived on the lines of his school. In nervous, tense muscular representation, and in the movement of the limbs, it is strikingly Signorellesque, and the realism of its wounds bespeaks the same characteristic; but the silky treatment of the skin, the roundness of the limbs, the upturned piteous face, the locks of hair, the extraordinarily exaggerated size of the great toe, and, above all, the intricate puckered folds of the drapery, are Perugino's and Perugino's alone.

The painting of the drapery which becomes a mannerism, and one of the most accurate of tests here in the very early days of the artist, takes certain definite forms, and the dark hollows and curious hook-like folds are to be seen in this "San Sebastian," not certainly as freely but quite as definitely, as they appear in later days. The picture is but a fragment of what must have been an important fresco, but it is eloquent of better work to come, and shows promise of masterly execution that only three years afterwards was to be revealed at Rome in the Sistine Chapel. No other work exists to bridge over the time between Perugino's early training in Umbria, his sojourn in Florence, and his return as a well-known artist to the town and neighbourhood of Perugia, although there is said to be a picture near Naples dated 1460, but the date is probably apocryphal.