The Crucifixion with the Virgin, Saint John, Saint Jerome, and Saint Mary Magdalene
Pietro Perugino·c. 1482/1485
Historical Context
Perugino's Crucifixion with the Virgin, Saint John, Saint Jerome, and Saint Mary Magdalene from around 1482-85 was painted during the period of his greatest celebrity, when he was working simultaneously on the Sistine Chapel frescoes for Pope Sixtus IV and producing major altarpieces for patrons across Central Italy. The composition — Christ on the cross attended by mourning figures in an open Umbrian landscape — shows his mature mastery of sacred narrative: the figures occupy a believable three-dimensional space while maintaining the formal clarity of a devotional object designed to focus prayer. The landscape background, with its characteristic blue distances and feathery trees, was Perugino's most original contribution to Italian painting, creating the Umbrian vision of nature as transparent spiritual medium that Raphael absorbed and transmitted to the entire High Renaissance tradition.
Technical Analysis
The unified triptych demonstrates Perugino's mastery of multi-panel composition, with consistent lighting, palette, and spatial depth across all three panels. The oil technique on panel transferred to canvas retains the luminous, refined quality of the original, with smooth, idealized figures set against a continuous Umbrian landscape.
Provenance
Probably commissioned by Bartolommeo Bartoli (or di Bartolo), Bishop of Cagli [d. 1497];[1] by gift from him to the church of San Domenico, San Gimignano; seized 1796/1797 by Napoleonic troops; acquired 1796/1797 by Dr. Buzzi, and sold soon thereafter to Prince Alexander Mikhailovich Galitzin [1772-1821], Russian ambassador to Rome; by inheritance to his son, Theodore Alexandrovich Galitzin [d. 1848], Palazzo Galitzin, Rome; by inheritance to his nephew, Sergei Mikhailovich Galitzin [1843-1915], Moscow; displayed from 1865 at the Museum of Western European Painting of Prince S.M. Galitzin, Moscow;[2] purchased 1886 with the Galitzin collection by the Imperial Hermitage Gallery, Saint Petersburg; purchased April 1931 through (Matthiesen Gallery, Berlin; P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., London and New York; and M. Knoedler & Co., New York and London) by Andrew W. Mellon, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.; deeded 5 June 1931 to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh;[3] gift 1937 to NGA. [1] The frame on the painting is modern and thus the coats-of-arms decorating it have no bearing on the provenance. [2] A.A. Vasilchikoff, "The Artworks of Raphael in Russsia," _Viestnik iziashnych iskusstv [Fine Arts Herald]_ I, no. 3 (1883): 390-393, provides this history of ownership. He also notes that Buzzi had the French artist Baron François Xavier Fabre treat the picture, and that after Theodore Galitzin's death, the painting languished in a storage closet of his palace until 1862. According to Brüiningk and Somov (E. Brüiningk and Andrei Ivanovich Somov, _Ermitage Impérial. Catalogue de la Galerie des Tableaux. Les Écoles d'Italie et d'Espagne_, Saint Petersburg, 1891: 134), a Livornese painter named Gazzarini offered a somewhat different account of the pre-Galitzin ownership of the picture, which cannot today be substantiated. See also R.P. Gray, "The Golitsyn and Kushelev-Bezborodko Collections and their Role in the Evolution of Public Art Collections in Russia," _Oxford Slavonic Papers_ n.s. 31 (1998): 54-57 [51-67]. [3] Mellon purchase date and date deeded to Mellon Trust are according to Mellon collection files in NGA curatorial records and David Finley's notebook (donated to the National Gallery of Art in 1977, now in the Gallery Archives).
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