(Città della Pieve circa 1448–1523 Fontignano)
The Madonna and Child enthroned with Saint Sebastian and John the Baptist, Saint Roch and Saint Peter,
oil on canvas, transferred from panel, 205.5 x 205 cm, framed

Provenance:
said to have hung in the Residence of the Cardinals of Lucca;
Baron Alberto Blanc (1835–1904), French Ambassador to Rome;
Edward Cheney (1803–1884), Badger Hall, Shropshire, England;
possibly Dukes of Savoy, Château de Chambéry, France;
with Galerie Sedelmeyer, Paris;
with Eugène Fischoff, Paris, until 1909;
Mary Frick Jacobs (1851–1936), Baltimore, until 1938;
when bequeathed to the Baltimore Museum of Art;
sale, Christie’s, New York, 9 October 1991, lot 199 (as ‘Workshop of Pietro Vannucci, il Perugino’);
Private European collection

Literature:
W. Bombe, Perugino. Des Meisters Gemälde in 249 Abbildungen, Stuttgart/Berlin 1914, illustrated p. 205, p. 254 (under ‘doubtful and wrongly attributed pictures’);
U. Gnoli, Pietro Perugino, Spoleto 1923, p. 46 (as ‘Giannicola di Paolo’);
U. Gnoli, Pittori e miniatori nell’Umbria, Foligno 1923, p. 139 (as ‘Giannicola di Paolo’);
L. Venturi, Pitture Italiane in America, Milan 1931, s. p., pl. 251 (as ‘Perugino and collaborators’);
F. Canuti, Il Perugino, Siena 1931, vol. II, p. 353 (under ‘works of doubtful attribution or by school’; ‘considered as by Giannicola di Paolo’);
R. van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, The Hague 1933, p. 430 (as ‘Giannicola di Paolo’);
E. Camesasca, Tutta la pittura del Perugino, Milan 1959, pp. 154–155, pl. 231 (as ‘The master’s hand seems to have left very few traces here’);
B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. A list of the principal artists and their works with and index of places. Central Italian and North Italian Schools, New York 1968, vol. I, p. 325 (as ‘Perugino and workshop’);
C. Castellaneta, E. Camesasca, L’opera completa del Perugino, Milan 1969, no. 223 (under ‘further attributed paintings’);
K. Oberhuber, The Colonna Altarpiece in the Metropolitan Museum and Problems of the Early Style of Raphael, in: Metropolitan Museum Journal, 12, 1978, p. 69, note 40 (as ‘Perugino or his circle’);
A. Derbes, in: G. Rosenthal (ed.), Italian Paintings XIV–XVIII Centuries from the collection of The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1981, pp. 323–325, no. A3 (under ‘Appendix of Unauthenticated Paintings’ as ‘possibly a copy after a lost original by Perugino or his workshop, or a painting by a follower of Perugino of the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century’);
P. Scarpellini, Perugino, Milan 1984, no. 139, fig. 230 (as ‘Perugino and a collaborator, possibly Giannicola di Paolo’);
P. Scarpellini, Perugino, Milan 1991, p. 112, no. 139, illustrated p. 261, fig. 230 (as ‘Perugino and a collaborator, possibly Giannicola di Paolo’);
J. Antenucci Becherer (ed.), Pietro Perugino. Master of the Italian Renaissance, exhibition catalogue, Michigan/New York 1997, pp. 76, 116, cat. no. 1 (as ‘Unknown Followers of Perugino’)

Perugino, one of the most celebrated artists of his time, developed the traditional Italian workshop into a highly organised artistic enterprise for the large-scale production of individually commissioned paintings. As Vasari recorded: ‘Pietro made many masters in his own manner […] which pleased his time so much, that many came from France, from Spain, from Germany, and from other lands to learn it’ (see G. Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects,vol I, London 1996, pp. 595, 597). Aspiring artists were not only drawn to him because of his highly regarded artist output, but also because of the outstanding commercial success of his works.

Among the designs available for Perugino’s patrons to choose from, the Madonna and Child with Saints occupied a position of great importance. The Umbrian master proposed a prototype whose impact was enormous: the Madonna seated on a throne, placed upon a pedestal, flanked on both sides by saints in full-length, with a landscape in the background.

The author of the present painting had amply and assuredly assimilated the entirety of Perugino’s pictorial language, and especially the typical traits of his works of the 1490s. Not only the general composition, but also aspects of drapery and physiognomy, such as the gazes of the Madonna and Child, turned in opposite directions, the depiction of only one foot of the Madonna and the robes of the saints which echo a characteristic formula, with the fabric hanging in loops at the waist, clinging to the thigh and breaking into u-shaped folds just below the knee. Also, the features of the Madonna, with the square neckline, softened by a translucent veil and the delicate gold embroidery at the bodice recall Perugino’s work of this time.

One pupil and collaborator of Perugino, who has been proposed to be the possible creator of the present painting is Giannicola di Paolo, whose painterly personality emerged while he was still a pupil of Perugino. As seen in other works which are attributed to Giannicola, the figures here show big round foreheads, a brownish line between their lips and a greyish contour between their fingers. The final question of attribution for this altarpiece, however, at present remains open.