Name by which the Italian painter Pietro Vannucci is known (born in Città della Pieve maybe in 1445 – died in Fontignano 1523). After completing his first education in Perugia, he was probably a pupil of Piero della Francesca in Arezzo; in 1472 he was in Florence, busy learning the technique of oil painting studying the works of the primitive Flemish, which were highly esteemed at the time, and completing his own preparation under the guide of Verrocchio. Of his activity prior to year 1481 few works remain: the Miracoli di S. Bernardino (maybe done in collaboration with Pinturicchio) and the Adorazione dei Magi in the Pinacoteca di Perugia and the fresco S. Sebastiano in the church of S. Maria in Cerqueto; this last one is a beautiful painting that reveals plastic ability, anatomic science and a secure adhesion to the modes of the Florentine Renaissance. Perugino 's Tuscan culture appears even more lively in the large composition Consegna delle chiavi a truly monumental fresco painted by the artist in the Sistine Chapel in Rome in 1481 ( iter 9 ). Equally bonded to Verrochio is the Vergine in trono in the Louvre, while the Flemish examples studied in Florence are strongly impressed in the landscape of the triptych in the Ermitage in Leningrad . With the works performed in 1488-89 ( Annunciazione , Fano; Apparizione della Vergine a S. Bernardo , Monaco) begins the highest phase of the maestro's production, that will last until around 1500; having already reached full artistic maturity, Perugino demonstrates he has known how to draw profit from the teachings he received in Arezzo and in Florence to conquer for himself an expressive mean completely original, founded on the harmony of figures largely, if not vigorously, modeled on a lyric intuition of the spatial and musical value of landscape. Fit into architectonic frames that are equally harmonic as they are simple, or immersed in the solitary quietness of the Umbrian landscape degrading in soft modulations under the luminous immensity of the sky, Perugino 's characters, especially his Madonnas, acquire an inimitable grace that participates with miraculous balance to the high melancholy implied in the very rhythm of the spaces. To this moment of greater inventive gladness and highest lyricism, belong the following works: the Natività of Villa Albani, the Pietà of S. Giusto, the altar-piece with the Vergine in trono tra due Santi (both of them now in the Uffizi), the Deposizione (Pitti), the marvelous Crocefissione painted in the convent of S. Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, some among the best-known Madonne (Vienna; Cremona; Pinacoteca Vaticana (iter 9 ); Fano).

That Perugino possessed a sure capacity of penetrating in the individual psychology of the characters, is demonstrated by the portraits inserted, for instance, in the Consegna delle chiavi or performed as works in their own right (portrait of Francesco delle Opere, Uffizi); nonetheless, he became famous among the contemporary artists, and – at least in the most common and current judgment – he still is, for knowing how to create a type of feminine beauty whose full and round face, small mouth, absorbed gaze and the accurate hair and clothes arrangement give so much of ideal beauty as they take away of individual characterization. This typification was interpreted as a religious sense, rich of mysticism; a fact that although speaks in favor of the artistic talent of the painter, since he was notoriously “a man of very little religion” (Vasari), if not an unbeliever. But this fact also explains the enormous success reached by his production of the 1490-1500 decade, when he's considered as the “best maestro in Italy” and sees his work requested in Florence, Rome, Perugia, Mantova, Cremona, Venice and in other cities, while students, more numerous as time passes, come even from far countries to his offices in Florence and Perugia, and among these pupils there will also be young Raffaello. Yet, in this very period begins his unstoppable decadence; in 1500 Perugino ends the decoration of the Sala del Cambio in Perugia with the allegoric figures of the Virtù cardinali, Profeti, Sibille, Greek and roman characters, the Eterno Padre , the Trasfigurazione and l' Adorazione del Bambino .

This last one a quite ambitious work that was meant to demonstrate that perfection can be obtained by harmonizing the virtues of the people of old with the faith in Christ; but the results, also due to the large participation of help to the painting of the frescoes, were far from the original intention. The Combattimento tra l'Amore e la Castità (Louvre), painted in 1505 for Isabella Gonzaga appears even more feeble. The fact is that the miraculous balance of the better times carried with it the danger of sentimentalism; it suggested the temptation of repeating more tiresomely each time a formula that had proved to be happy. Perugino was not able of shunning this risk: his last years found him busy imitating himself in mannerist weakened works and repeating tiredly the same old schemes in the small centers in Umbria, while in Florence and Rome he was already considered an obsolete artist.