Pinacoteca Room VII

An arched setting gathers Mary and the child Jesus with four saints in Perugino’s altarpiece. The figures are arranged around a central throne, with architecture giving them a shared space. The saints are protectors of Perugia, the city that commissioned the work. The painting was made in 1495–1496 for the chapel of Perugia’s civic palace. Its patrons were the Decemviri, the city’s governing body. A sacred picture could therefore also belong to the setting in which a city presented its authority and its protectors. The smaller panels of St Benedict, St Flavia and St Placidus came from another commission, the altarpiece for San Pietro in Perugia. That ensemble was later dismantled. These saints belonged to its lower painted sections. Compare their separate formats with the unified architecture of the larger Madonna. Perugino worked for different patrons and settings within the same city, and the museum now brings those commissions together.