Coming to theaters is Perugino. Renaissance Immortal, film event celebrating the great painter

Perugino. Rinascimento Immortale is the film that for the first time on the big screen celebrates one of the most beloved and brilliant painters of his time-Pietro di Cristoforo Vannucci, known as il Perugino (Città della Pieve, c. 1448 - Fontignano, 1523). Produced by Ballandi and directed by Giovanni Piscaglia (director of Van Gogh, Between the Grain and the Sky and Napoleon), the documentary, with the extraordinary participation of Marco Bocci, arrives in theaters April 3, 4, 5 to tell the story of Perugino’s life and work, starting from the link with his land, Umbria, and in particular with the luminous landscapes that open up on the shores of Lake Trasimeno that Perugino often immortalized in the background of his paintings (on the website nexodigital.it the list of rooms will be published soon).

From Castel della Pieve, a village nestled in those landscapes, Perugino, began his artistic journey that would lead him to establish himself in the creative capitals of the time, Rome and Florence, in contact with masters such as Verrocchio, and colleagues such as Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci. Yet despite the fact that Perugino was a central artist of the Renaissance, the most famous and in demand in the two decades from 1480 to 1500, his fame has gradually faded with the passage of centuries until it has come to the present day faded and devoid of its real value. Why did this happen? Much has been affected by the shadow cast over him by the artists of the new manner, and in particular Raphael. Indeed, Perugino is often cited and known only as a master of the Urbino painter. But beyond Raphael’s merits, much of Perugino’s critical misfortune is also due to Giorgio Vasari, the artists’ biographer who in his Lives relegates Perugino to a second-rate figure and describes him in derogatory tones by reporting negative anecdotes and character traits.

This docu-film attempts to refute Vasari, bringing to the viewer evidence and documents, listening to the voices of leading scholars and art historians, analyzing the works in detail, and seeking a different truth from the one that has come down to the present day. We start with the earliest Perugian works such as the tablets of San Bernardino, where the Renaissance burst into Perugia brought precisely by Perugino’s hand and visionary ideas. Also in Perugia, Pietro produced his first masterpiece: The Adoration of the Magi in the National Gallery of Umbria. Consecration came in the 1580s with the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, in which we can still admire The Handing Over of the Keys.

At this point, Perugino was the rising star of Italian art and in Florence he opened a workshop following the example of his master Verrocchio. It is a perfectly run workshop that churns out many works and receives numerous commissions. Perugino’s entrepreneurial skill is incredible and the trademark of his paintings, his style, becomes recognizable and admired and spreads throughout Italy. The viewer will be guided to discover the artist’s harmonious painting: a perfect balance between man and nature, reality and ideal, which characterizes paintings such as The Delivery of the Keysin the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, Lamentation over the Dead Christ in the Palatine Gallery in Florence, and Pieta and The Oration in the Garden in the Uffizi Galleries. Perugino invented compositions and iconography that set the school, spread a new ideal of female beauty through his Madonnas, and conceived extraordinary fresco cycles as in the Collegio del Cambio in Perugia.

In the 1580s, Perugino is renowned in both Florence and Perugia. He even has two workshops and is in demand by major Italian courts. Wherever his art arrives, local painters are influenced by it and his language spreads. It is a simple and direct language with great devotional bearing. And it is perhaps for this reason that Perugino’s paintings are spared from the pyres of Savonarola, the friar who took power in Florence in the mid-1590s. Perugino also passed through Savonarola’s storm unscathed: his steadfastness in painting and imperviousness of character enabled him to produce devotional paintings of extraordinary beauty and harmony that were taken as models by so many painters who followed him. A phenomenon of proportions comparable only to what happened, before him, with the art of Giotto. But times change, and in the early 1500s great art geniuses such as Raphael, Leonardo, and Michelangelo come to the fore. Their inventions overshadowed the fame of Perugino who, in the last 20 years of his long life, was forced to retire to his native Umbria where he painted masterpieces such as The Adoration of the Magi in Città della Pieve and The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian in Panicale. He died of the plague in 1523 in Fontignano, his paintbrush still in his hand. After his death, Perugino’s genius and importance are overshadowed, forgotten, misrepresented. But no misreading can diminish his painting, which is still able to convey to us all its strength and purity.

The goal of the documentary will be precisely to restore Perugino to his rightful place in history in art, highlighting his innovations, merits, and character, exactly 500 years after his death. The documentary will also take a close look at the setting up of the two rooms entirely dedicated to the artist at the National Gallery of Umbria, recounting, among other things, the restoration of some of his works. Thus, thanks to evocative footage and the intervention of experts such as the Director National Gallery of Umbria Marco Pierini, the Director of the Uffizi Galleries in Florence Eike Schmidt, the professor of History of Architecture at the University of Florence Emanuela Ferretti, Geographer at the University of Bologna Franco Farinelli, art historian at the National Gallery of Umbria Veruska Picchiarelli, historian Franco Cardini, choreographer and dancer Virgilio Sieni, Perugino. Rinascimento Immortale will highlight the peculiarities of the artist and his fundamental within the history of the Renaissance.

A journey through Italy to discover the great masterpieces: from the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel to the two rooms entirely dedicated to him at the National Gallery of Umbria, from the Collegio del Cambio to the State Archives of Perugia, from the Augusta Library to the San Severo Chapel in Cerqueto, and again the Oratory of Santa Maria dei Bianchi and the Cathedral of Saints Gervasio and Protasio Città della Pieve, the Church of San Sebastiano in Panicale, the Church of Santa Maria dell’Annunziata, the Palatina Gallery, the Uffizi, Museo Galileo Galilei, Cenacolo del Fuligno, Liceo Michelangiolo, Florence State Archives, San Marco Library in Florence, and the Pinacoteca in Bologna.

The project was supported by: Ministry of Culture, Umbria Region, Arpa Umbria. La Grande Arte al Cinema is an original and exclusive project of Nexo Digital, which is exclusively distributing La Grande Arte al Cinema in Italy for 2023 with media partners Radio Capital, Sky Arte, MYmovies.it and in collaboration with Abbonamento Musei.

Coming to theaters is Perugino. Renaissance Immortal, film event celebrating the great painter

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