2023 will be remembered as the year of Perugino.

From 4 March to 11 June 2023 , on the occasion of the fifth centenary of his death, the National Gallery of Umbria in Perugia celebrates Pietro Vannucci (c. 1450-1523), the most important painter active in the last two decades, with a major exhibition of the fifteenth century.

The exhibition, entitled " The best master of Italy ". Perugino nel suo tempo, curated by Marco Pierini, director of the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria, and Veruska Picchiarelli, curator of the Perugian museum, will restore to Perugino, the absolute protagonist of the Renaissance, the role of artistic prominence that his audience and his era gave him had assigned, through capital tests of his production, all prior to 1504, or at the time when he was at the height of his extraordinary career.

The exhibition will be the flagship event of the centenary celebrations, coordinated by a National Committee, set up by the Ministry of Culture and chaired by Ilaria Borletti Buitoni, and will involve some of the most important national and international museums, such as the Uffizi Galleries in Florence and the National Gallery in Washington, in a genuine scientific partnership.

The exhibition project, made up of over seventy works, has chosen to identify only paintings by Vannucci prior to 1504, the year in which he was working on three commissions that mark the high point of his career: the Crucifixion in the Chigi Chapel in Sant'Agostino in Siena, the Struggle between Love and Chastity already in Mantua, now in the Louvre in Paris, and above all the Marriage of the Virgin for the chapel of the Holy Ring of the Cathedral of Perugia, today in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Caen (France).

The exhibition will give an account, in the most complete way possible, of the fundamental passages of his career: from the first collaborations in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio to the capital Florentine companies that made his fortune (such as for example the three tables already in San Giusto alle Mura, today in the Uffizi Galleries, or the Altarpiece of San Domenico in Fiesole); from the extraordinary portraits to the monumental altarpieces, such as the Galitzin Triptych, now in the National Gallery in Washington, and the Polyptych of the Certosa di Pavia, mostly in the National Gallery in London and exceptionally recomposed for the occasion.