| Description : Pietro Vannucci (∼1448‐1523), called 'Perugino'
(from Perugia), was an Italian painter of the Renaissance. He was considered the most important master of the Umbrian
School and was Raphael's teacher. His own teachers were probably Piero della Francesca and Andrea del Verrocchio, in whose
workshop Leonardo da Vinci, among others, was trained. In 1481, he painted his most famous painting, "Christ hands the keys
to Peter", one of the works from the wall fresco cycle in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, in which the most celebrated
painters in Italy at the time collaborated. The perspective depth stretching particularly impressed the people of the time.
A detail of another of Perugino's frescoes to the right of the altar in the Sistine Chapel, the "Baptism of Christ" painted
in 1482, is depicted on the left of the commemorative coin: John the Baptist baptising Christ in and with the waters of the
Jordan, under the hovering dove of the Holy Spirit. On the right foreground, the coin designer Daniela Fusco has
placed a self‐portrait of Perugino, which he painted between 1497 and 1500 as a fresco in the 'Collegio del Cambio' of
the Palazzo dei Priori (Prior's Palace) in Perugia. Below is written in two lines "PERUGINO" and with "1523 ‐ 2023"
his year of death and the year of issue. In the upper right corner, in the shape of an arc, the issuing state "CITTÁ
DEL VATICANO" (Vatican City); on the left the initial "R" the mint mark of the Italian mint Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca
dello Stato in Rome is depicted, on the left next to the portrait with "FUSCO" the name of the designer and on the
right with "A.M.INC." (INC. = Incisore / Engraver) the logo of the medallist Annalisa Masini. |
