Perugino's Adoration of the Shepherds goes on Christmas trip to Milan

A Perugino masterpiece for Milan: in keeping with tradition, the Lombard capital will once again host a painting for the Christmas season this year. In fact: there will be as many as two. The protagonist of the traditional “ostension” in Palazzo Marino is not yet known. What is known, however, is that this year the fate of lending itself to the custom will fall to theAdoration of the Shepherds by Pietro Vannucci, better known as il Perugino (Città della Pieve, 1448 - Fontignano, 1523): the work comes from the National Gallery of Umbria, is one of the masterpieces of the painter’s artistic maturity (as well as one of the most important paintings in the Perugia museum) and will be on display at the Diocesan Museum from October 20, 2017 to January 28, 2018 for an event curated by the directors of the two museums involved in the operation, Nadia Righi for the Diocesan Museum and Marco Pierini for the National Gallery.

The Adoration constitutes the main compartment of a polyptych, the Polyptych of St. Augustine, which was dismembered in ancient times and is now divided among several museums, although several of the panels are preserved precisely at the National Gallery of Umbria (others are in the Museum of Grenoble, the Louvre, the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery: the fact that they are almost all in France is because the work was involved in the Napoleonic spoliations). It was intended to be viewed from both sides: it is in fact a polyptych that has panels painted on both the recto and verso. The artist executed the important work beginning in 1502, but worked on it until his death. The fragment with theAdoration is more than two and a half meters high, was intended for the verso of the polyptych, and sums up all the main features of Raphael’s master’s art: balance, symmetry, delicacy, gentleness in the features of the characters and the landscape.

Image: Perugino, Adoration of the Shepherds from the Polyptych of St. Augustine, detail (c. 1512-1523; oil on panel, 263 x 147 cm; Perugia, National Gallery of Umbria)

Perugino's Adoration of the Shepherds goes on Christmas trip to Milan

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