Madonna and Child with two cherubs

Pietro Vannucci, known as il Perugino
tempera on panel
last decade of the 15th century 

This painting illustrates the painter’s masterful drawing technique and his unique ability, anticipating Raphael, to execute holy iconography even in a small format painting. Nothing is known about this panel’s history prior to 1847, when it entered Sir Holford’s collection in London. In 1893 it was exhibited and attributed to Perugino during the Ancient Italian Fine Arts Exhibition in the New Gallery in London. It was some years later, during the Umbrian Painting Exhibition,(1910) at the Burlington Fine Art Club in London that hypothesis was first aired that this piece in fact originally belonged to a triptych, whose wings depicted Saint Sebastian and Saint Jerome. 

The cherub’s heads, which had been obscured by dark paint, came back to light after a restoration carried out in 1927. Following a sale later that same year, the painting entered Robiolio di Biella’s collection where it remained until 1987 when it was purchased by the Cassa di Risparmio di Perugia. As a work from Perugino’s mature years which is stylistically comparable to his Pala dei Decemviri (Decemviri altarpiece), this painting can be dated to the last decade of the 15th Century.