500th Anniversary of the Death of Pietro Perugino

A portrait of Perugino alongside a detail from his fresco 'The Baptism of Christ' in the Sistine Chapel. At the upper right, the issuing state 'CITTÀ DEL VATICANO' in a semicircle. Below, the commemorative inscription 'PERUGINO' and the dates '1523 ◦ 2023'. To the left, the mint mark 'R'. Below the baptism scene, the surname of designer 'FUSCO'.

Pietro Perugino is one of the defining painters of the Italian High Renaissance. Born around 1448 in Città della Pieve in Umbria, he became the leading representative of the Umbrian school of painting, developing a style that combined clarity, harmonious composition, and gentle handling of light. His training took him to Florence, where he is believed to have worked in the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio — the same environment in which Leonardo da Vinci got his start. Perugino worked for some of the most important patrons of his time: besides the Vatican, these included papal dignitaries, Florentine merchant families, and northern Italian courts. His work influenced an entire generation of younger painters, above all his pupil Raphael, who took up and developed further Perugino's compositional principles.

Of particular significance is Perugino's contribution to the decoration of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV from 1481 onward. Perugino was one of the leading masters on this project and created several large-format frescoes there, including the Delivery of the Keys to St. Peter, regarded as one of his major works. In Umbria he left behind a dense network of altarpieces, fresco cycles, and devotional paintings that can still be seen today in the region's churches and museums. After his death in 1523 — probably in Fontignano, where he died of the plague — his fame was initially overshadowed by Raphael and Michelangelo, but was reassessed by art history in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 2023 the Vatican commemorates the 500th anniversary of Perugino's death with a 2-euro coin, honouring an artist whose works still shape the Vatican collections today.