The Virgin and Child with an Angel

In this painting Perugino has stressed the humility of the Virgin Mary, positioning her directly in a grassy meadow as she kneels before the infant Christ, a chubby baby. He is supported by an angel who looks towards Mary, sharing in her knowledge of his divinity.The Virgin’s pinkish-red garment stands out against the blues and greens of the lush Italian countryside. This landscape contains all the features favoured by fifteenth-century painters: a river winds through the valley and past a small town, towards distant mountains. The further back we go, the more blue the mountains appear – a trick to make them seem like they are miles away. This technique, known as aerial perspective and invented by Leonardo, mimics how our perception of colour changes with distance, creating the effect of a vast landscape.This is the central panel of the lower tier of an altarpiece made for the Duke of Milan (the two flanking panels, The Archangel Michael and The Archangel Raphael with Tobias, are also in our collection). It shows off Perugino’s skill at painting in oil, blending colours to create subtle transitions between tones. This was particularly effective in the Virgin’s complexion, which is made up of many different shades of peach, cream and pink. With oil paint, features could be defined through the use of lighter and darker shades, eliminating the need for contour lines. When dark lines are used, they have added emphasis: the strongest accents in the painting of the Virgin’s face are the black lines that define the bottom of her upper eyelids, adding weight to her humble downward gaze as she worships Christ, her infant son.Infrared reflectography shows the underdrawing, and by comparing it with the final painted image we can see that Perugino changed his mind several times. The hovering winged angels at the top of the image, for example, were not part of the original design, and have been painted over the sky – usually painters in the period would paint landscape and sky around figures. Infrared reflectography shows that their outlines are made up of dotted lines, suggesting that the design was transferred from paper: pin pricks would be made along the lines of a paper design, then charcoal dust would be rubbed through and onto the panel.