Our Lady in Glory with Saints – Pinacoteca Nazionale – Bologna

This painting by Perugino, realized around 1500, arrived in Bologna thanks to Gabriele di Michele Scarani who commissioned it for the family altar in the church of San Giovanni in Monte, the same place that will host, in the adjacent chapel Duglioli, the Saint Cecilia by Raphael.

The composition of the altarpiece, balanced and perfectly symmetrical, is carried out on two registries, dividing the celestial sphere from the earthly world.

On the upper part of the painting, the Madonna and Child is seated on a throne of clouds inside a golden almond of light, surrounded by some heads of cherubim and a two adoring angels.

Below, four saints (from left to right: Michael the Archangel, Catherine of Alexandria, Apollonia and John the Evangelist, recognizable by their respective iconographic attributes) are arranged in a semicircle, allowing the observer to contemplate the landscape on the background fading into the distant horizon in a wonderful succession of hills, trees, mountains and a little turreted village.

Perugino also puts his signature on Saint Catherine’s attribute, the wheel; the execution of the saints, however, shows some solutions already adopted by Perugino in previous paintings,

and it is therefore rather attributed to the assistants of the artist.

The altarpiece is preserved in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna.