An innovative portrait that sees Perugino in a new light with respect to previous scholarly views that dismissed him as an artist with an elegant and rather entertaining style, dreamy poses and an enveloping chromatic aura.
[Perugino / Complete works] Following a line of studies that began with Adolfo Venturi and was then developed in the work of Gnoli and Zeri, the author attempts to reconstruct, in partial disagreement with his predecessors, the first phase of the work of Perugino, from the origins to the arrival in Perugia and the earliest paintings made in Umbria. The book retraces his activity in Rome, Florence and Perugia, organizing it differently, to a certain extent, than it has been in the past.
Scarpellini’s aim here is also to refute the myth of the immobile artist, the intellectually disengaged painter who continued to replicate certain successful inventions of his youth. What emerges is a different, more variegated and complex image of the artist, whose “routine” output is also accompanied by many moments of great creativity, not only in the initial part of his career, but right through to the final years work.