Fondazione Perugia purchased at a Viennese auction the highly prized panels Christ Crowned with Thorns (1497-1500) and the Virgin (1500), long owned by a private collector. The characters, both depicted on an identical bitumen-black backdrop, constitute an extraordinary example of Pietro Vannucci’s art and genius, particularly in their spiritual depth and depiction of faces. Both panels feature a leather covering on the verso with imprinted elegant decorative motifs and the Christological monogram, simulating the cover of a book. Originally the two figures composed a diptych connected by hinges and intended for private devotion. The two oil on panel works were produced by the Divine Painter in the twilight of the 15th century, in one of the happiest and most prolific periods of his life. In those years the master, active in Florence, knew and absorbed Flemish painting and the light of Leonardo, but he was also caught up in the atmosphere of Venice, where he went several times. In the background of the panels there is no ideal landscape or perspective architecture, only the deep black against which the protagonists of the scene are silhouetted, a fascinating and absolutely unprecedented solution that Perugino used extensively in that period and that was the focus, in 2023, of the exhibition NERO Perugino Burri, organized precisely by Fondazione Perugia.
Before passing over the decades into various foreign private collections, it is possible that Christ Crowned with Thorns and the Virgin were part of the collection of the Florentine intellectual Cosimo Bordoni, personal physician to Grand Duke Cosimo III de’ Medici. Indeed, in an inventory of the possessions of the professional, who died around 1703, “two companion paintings by Perugino” depicting “the Madonna and Jesus” are mentioned. The auction purchase of the two paintings will enrich the Perugia Foundation’s art collection housed in the Palazzo Baldeschi Museum on Corso Vannucci in Perugia, where two works by Perugino can already be admired and where the two new acquisitions will be exhibited starting in mid-December. “We are extremely happy and excited to have completed an operation of such artistic, cultural and identity value,” says Alcide Casini, president of Fondazione Perugia: ”The return to Italy of the two masterpieces will allow their full appreciation and, above all, their public enjoyment, as is in the mission of our institution. The celebrations for the 500th anniversary of Perugino’s death in 2023 reminded the entire territory of the absolute importance of this extraordinary artist. For that reason, this is a success of the entire community, because it is for it that the purchase was made.”
