In this land and presumably in this city was born in 1448 Pietro di Cristoforo Vannucci, known as "Il Perugino", one of the greatest painters of the early Italian Renaissance. The Perugino worked little in his native city, at least in young age; he returned there, instead, only in the first years of the ‘500 when he was already a painter of affirmed fame in the great Italian gardens and particularly in the pontifical one in Rome, where he had been Raffaello’s master. In Città della Pieve, Pietro Vannucci worked both in the cathedral, where two small canvases are preserved, and in the Oratorio dei Bianchi, whose confraternity entrusted him in 1504 with the creation of a large fresco representing the Adoration of the Magi for the chapel of the oratory.
It should not be confused with the more known Adoration of the Magi that the artist had realised in Perugia about 30 years before (about 1470) together with Raffaello and that still now is there, not only because this last one is an oil on panel realised around the period of Verrocchio’s workshop while the first one is a fresco but above all because the Adoration of the Magi of Città della Pieve hides some very interesting events.
One on all? It seems that the painter has realized it alone in 29 days of job! In the lineup of characters to the left of the central scene they are, besides, perhaps identifiable the juvenile portraits of Rafael (in green) and of the same Perugino (in red), I offer you a comparison with two works representing the two artists, the first of which represents a child, presumably Rafael, portrayed by the Perugino.
