On the occasion of the five hundredth anniversary of the death of Pietro Vannucci, known as Perugino, the Perugia Foundation in collaboration with the Burri Foundation presents NERO Perugino Burri from 22 June to 2 October 2023 at Palazzo Baldeschi in Perugia . The exhibition puts the works of two of the greatest Umbrian artists into dialogue through the common denominator of black, a suggestive and peculiar chromatic solution adopted by both. An exhibition that brings out the common traits of two artists equal in size and only apparently distant.

Fondazione Perugia participates in the celebrations dedicated to Perugino with a new and original exhibition: NERO Perugino Burri . Born from an idea of the Foundation itself and created in collaboration with the Burri Foundation, the exhibition is curated by the art historian Vittoria Garibaldi and the President of the Burri Foundation Bruno Corà, who enthusiastically welcomed the challenge of making the works of Perugino with those of Alberto Burri, two artists so distant in time, but united by a deep bond with their native land, Umbria.

The idea for the exhibition was born from Perugino's work the Madonna with Child and two cherubs, a precious tableau with an intimate and familiar flavor preserved in the permanent collection of the Perugia Foundation. The masterpiece portrays the Virgin with the child standing out against a completely black background, allowing the skin tones and colors of the clothes to stand out in an absolutely innovative way for the time. These are the best years of the master's career, when, active in Florence, he knows and absorbs Flemish painting and Leonardo's light, but is also involved in the atmosphere of Venice where he goes several times during the nineties.

Hence the desire to investigate the use of the black background in some of Perugino's works, all of small format and dated between the 15th and 16th centuries, where there is no ideal landscape or one borrowed from a visual suggestion , no perspective architecture, only the deep black against which the protagonists of the scene stand out, as never seen before. This research made it possible to obtain important loans, such as the splendid Portrait of Francesco delle Opere, probably painted in Venice, and the Portrait of a Youth, from the Uffizi Gallery, and also the Madonna and Child between Saint John and Saint Catherine from the Museo del Louvre.