William Michael Rossetti

“ Pietro, now aged forty, must have left Rome after the completion of the Sixtine paintings in 1486, and in the autumn of that year he was in Florence. Here he figures by no means advantageously in a criminal court. In July 1487 he and another Perugian painter named Aulista di Angelo were convicted, on their own confession, of having in December waylaid with staves some one (the name does not appear) in the street near S. Pietro Maggiore. Perugino limited himself, in intention, to assault and battery, but Aulista had made up his mind for murder. ”

“ The name of Perugino came to him from Perugia, the chief city of the neighbourhood. P1etro was one of several children born to Cristoforo Vannucci, a member of a respectable family settled at Città della Pieve. Though respectable, they seem to have been poor, or else, for some reason or other, to have left P1etro uncared for at the opening of his career. Before he had completed his ninth year the boy was articled to a master, a painter at Perugia. Who this may have been is very uncertain; the painter is spoken of as wholly mediocre, but sympathetic for the great things in his art. ”

“ An “Annunciation” has disappeared from cognisance; three compartments—the Virgin adoring the infant Christ, St Michael, and St Raphael with Tobias—are among the choicer treasures of the National Gallery, London. The current story that Raphael bore a hand in the work is not likely to be true. This was succeeded in 1505 by an “Assumption,” in the Cappella dei Rabatta, in the church of the Servi in Florence. The painting may have been executed chiefly by a pupil, and was at any rate a failure: it was much decried ”

“ He may have learned perspective, in which he particularly excelled for that period of art, from Piero de’ Franceschi. The date of this first Florentine sojourn is by no means settled; some authorities incline to make it as early as 1470. while others, with perhaps better reason, postpone it till 1479. Pietro at this time was extremely poor; he had no bed, but slept on a chest for many months, and, bent upon making his way, resolutely denied himself every creature comfort. ”