Profile of a protagonist of Italian Renaissance painting.

Pietro Vannucci called Perugino was born in Città dells Pieve, a town that was part of the Commune of Perugia in that period. After his first contacts with the artistic reality of Perugia, according to Vasari’s writing in 1550, he approached Piero della Francesca.  In 1472 Perugino joined the san Luca Society  in Florence. At the same time he began to attend the prestigious workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio. Being a long habitué of the Florentine environment profoundly influenced his artistic expression, to such a degree that his contemporaries did not hesitate to consider him a Tuscan Master: << Pietro Perugino, can be well-called Florentine, he who has grown-up here>> (F.Albertini, 1510). Giovanni Santi, Raphael’s father  (c.1485), underlined his similarity of temperament with Leonardo da Vinci, no doubt encountered in Verocchio’s workshop.