Madonna and Child between Saint John the Baptist and Saint Catherine of Alexandria – Musée du Louvre – Paris
On a black background, four figures stand out: the Madonna (whose simple and austere face recalls the traits of Chiara Fancelli, Perugino’s wife) is seated in the foreground on a low wall that can be barely seen, while she is gently holding Child Jesus, lying on her legs; behind them, on the left, Saint John the Baptist is caught in the act of prayer, while on the right Saint Catherine, dressed in a rich dark dress profiled in gold, holds the palm of martyrdom.
All the figures are full of a sweet but set monumentality: the expressions of the faces are in fact absorbed, the looks are directed elsewhere (with the exception of Saint Catherine, the only character who looks directly at the viewer). The atmosphere is simple and severe, perfectly in line with the spiritual climate established by Savonarola in the Florence betweent fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries (when the work was realized).
The light is soft, illuminating the characters from the right; the composition is well balanced, thanks also to the rhythmic responses of the heads inclinations. This type of construction is typical of Perugino’s mature works: the calm and pleasant scheme will in fact be repeated in other paintings, such as the Madonna and Child and Saint John (preserved at the Staedelsches Museum in Frankfurt) and the Madonna and Child between Saint Catherine of Alexandria and a saint at the Kuntshistorisches Museum in Vienna.
The work was acquired from the collection of Scitivaux, general of the French army in Tuscany, who transported the painting to Paris in 1816. The painting is preserved at the Musée du Louvre, in Paris.
