![The Crucifixion with the Virgin, Saint John, Saint Jerome, and Saint Mary Magdalene [middle panel] by Pietro Perugino](https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Redirect/file/Pietro_Perugino_040.jpg&width=1200)
The Crucifixion with the Virgin, Saint John, Saint Jerome, and Saint Mary Magdalene [middle panel]
Pietro Perugino·c. 1482/1485
Historical Context
Correggio's Salvator Mundi (c. 1515–20) at the Uffizi depicts Christ in bust-length offering a blessing, the standard devotional type popularized by Bellini and other north Italian painters. Correggio transforms the conventional formula through his characteristic handling: the soft light that models Christ's face with an almost sculptural roundness, the gentle gaze that combines authority with tenderness, and the delicate sfumato at the edges of the form that dissolves the figure's boundaries into the atmospheric background. The result is an image of devotional intimacy that invites the viewer into personal encounter with the divine rather than formal adoration of a distant authority.
Technical Analysis
The central panel demonstrates Perugino's supreme compositional balance, with the cross forming a strong vertical axis and the figures arranged symmetrically below. The oil technique achieves luminous, translucent flesh tones and rich drapery colors. The landscape recedes through carefully graduated blue-green tones into an infinite, luminous distance.
Provenance
Probably commissioned by Bartolommeo Bartoli (or di Bartolo), Bishop of Cagli [d. 1497];[1] by gift from him to the church of San Domenico, San Gimignano; seized 1796/1797 by Napoleonic troops; acquired 1796/1797 by Dr. Buzzi, and sold soon thereafter to Prince Alexander Mikhailovich Galitzin [1772-1821], Russian ambassador to Rome; by inheritance to his son, Theodore Alexandrovich Galitzin [d. 1848], Palazzo Galitzin, Rome; by inheritance to his nephew, Sergei Mikhailovich Galitzin [1843-1915], Moscow; displayed from 1865 at the Museum of Western European Painting of Prince S.M. Galitzin, Moscow;[2] purchased 1886 with the Galitzin collection by the Imperial Hermitage Gallery, St. Petersburg; purchased April 1931 through (Matthiesen Gallery, Berlin; P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., London and New York; and M. Knoedler & Co., New York and London) by Andrew W. Mellon, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.; deeded 5 June 1931 to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh;[3] gift 1937 to NGA. [1] The frame on the painting is modern and thus the coats-of-arms decorating it have no bearing on the provenance. [2] A.A. Vasilchikoff, "The Artworks of Raphael in Russsia," _Viestnik iziashnych iskusstv [Fine Arts Herald]_ I, no. 3 (1883): 390-393, provides this history of ownership. He also notes that Buzzi had the French artist Baron François Xavier Fabre treat the picture, and that after Theodore Galitzin's death, the painting languished in a storage closet of his palace until 1862. According to Brüiningk and Somov (E. Brüiningk and Andrei Ivanovich Somov, _Ermitage Impérial. Catalogue de la Galerie des Tableaux. Les Écoles d'Italie et d'Espagne_, St. Petersburg, 1891: 134), a Livornese painter named Gazzarini offered a somewhat different account of the pre-Galitzin ownership of the picture, which cannot today be substantiated. See also R.P. Gray, "The Golitsyn and Kushelev-Bezborodko Collections and their Role in the Evolution of Public Art Collections in Russia," _Oxford Slavonic Papers_ n.s. 31 (1998): 54-57 [51-67]. [3] Mellon purchase date and date deeded to Mellon Trust are according to Mellon collection files in NGA curatorial records and David Finley's notebook (donated to the National Gallery of Art in 1977, now in the Gallery Archives).
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