Italian school; XIX century.

Italian school; XIX century.
"Portrait of Perugino".
Oil on canvas.
Presents restorations.
Measurements: 40 x 30 cm; 57 x 46 cm (frame).
This work is part of the historicist tradition that characterized much of the artistic production of the time, particularly in relation to the recovery of the formal language of the Renaissance. The portrait faithfully follows the model of the famous Portrait of Perugino, attributed to Pietro Perugino and preserved in the collection of the Collegio del Cambio, in the Palazzo dei Priori in Perugia. The original piece, executed at the end of the Quattrocento, is one of the most refined examples of Umbrian portraiture.
Perugino's Portrait achieved great notoriety in the 18th century, when the rediscovery of the Italian Renaissance by travelers, collectors and scholars generated a renewed interest in the Umbrian masters. The prestige of Perugino, master of Raphael and key figure of Renaissance idealism, turned this portrait into a paradigm of representation.
The composition, of elegant sobriety, offered painters a canonical example of portraiture: bust figure, neutral background, soft lighting and a serene face combining introspection and nobility. These qualities made the portrait a recurring motif in academic training, where its copying became a fundamental exercise.
The nineteenth-century work that concerns us is part of that tradition of interpretative copies made by Italian artists who sought to update the values of the Renaissance in the historicist context.