Museums at Work
At the dawn of Raphael. Perugino's Decemviri Altarpiece
Room XVII, Pinacoteca
Perugino's Decemviri Altarpiece - after having been admired in Perugia in its newfound unity and original beauty during the recently concluded exhibition - will again make a triumphant return home, again exceptionally and temporarily recomposed, from 8 February to 30 September.
An unmissable occasion, born of a fortunate and fruitful collaboration between the Pope’s Museums and the National Gallery of Umbria, to admire also in the Vatican Pinacoteca the recomposition of the Umbrian master’s famous altarpiece: the panel with the Enthroned Madonna and Child with Saints of the Vatican Museums reinserted in its splendid original context and reunited at the cymatium depicting the Pietà of the Perugia museum.
The two paintings, produced in 1495 for the Chapel of the Palazzo dei Priori in Perugia, were separated in 1797, following the French requisitions during which only the large panel was taken to Paris. The frame and cymatium were instead left in the Palace.
After the fall of Napoleon, the panel was not returned to Perugia but, by order of Pius VII, it became part of the Vatican Pinacoteca.
The year of the Raphaelesque celebrations for the five-hundredth anniversary of the death of the Urbinate master - the Sanzio Year, to use a neologism - opens in the Vatican with the reconstruction of one of the most significant works of his master, Pietro Vannucci, known as Perugino.