Perugino, a celebrated Italian painter, whose real name was PIETRO VANNUCCI, was born at Città della Pieve in Umbria, in 1446, but established himself in the neighbouring city of Perugia, whence his usual appellation. Vasari says he studied under Verrocchio at Florence. He executed important works, no longer extant, at Florence, Perugia (1475), and Cerqueto (1478). At Rome, whither he went about 1483, Sixtus IV. employed him in the Sistine Chapel; his fresco of 'Christ giving the Keys to Peter' is the best of those still visible—others by him being destroyed to make way for Michelangelo's 'Last Judgment.' During his next sojourn at Florence (1486–99) he had Raphael for his pupil. Here he was fined for waylaying and assaulting a citizen, and became somewhat too fond of money, repeating his works and leaving much of the execution to pupils. At Perugia (1499–1504) he adorned the Hall of the Cambio, with the assistance of Raphael and other pupils; but after 1500 his art visibly declined. In his second Roman sojourn (1507–12) he also, along with other painters, decorated the Stanze of the Vatican; and one of his works there, the Stanza del Incendio, was the only fresco spared when Raphael was commissioned to substitute his works for those formerly painted on the walls and ceilings. The new school, with Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael, was now in the ascendant, and Perugino's popularity waned. He was again at Perugia in 1512, and painted a number of pictures there. He was painting frescoes in a church at Castello di Fontignano, near Perugia (one of which frescoes is now at South Kensington), when he was seized by the plague, of which he died in 1524.
Perugino's art was religious, though he is said by Vasari (biased in all regards by Michelangelo's contempt for Perugino) to have been an open disbeliever in the immortality of the soul. In his figures, very unequally drawn, there is a peculiar tenderness of expression verging on mawkishness; his execution was delicate, his colour admirable. But he is not remarkable for originality or intensity.