Works of Art Removed from

Santa Maria di Monteluce

Madonna and Child with angels (1465)

This altarpiece was moved fromthe church to the Galleria Nazionale (Room 15/16) in 1863.  It is almost certainly the painting of the Madonna and Child described in the “Memoriale di Santa Maria di Monteluce”, which was given to the nuns by “Fioravanti dai Matti di Peroscia” and placed on the Altare del Sacramento in the time that Eufrasia Alfani was abbess.  It is the earliest work to be attributed to Bartolomeo Caporali, and one of the first by a Perugian artist to be painted, at least partially, in oil.

Adoration of the shepherds (1476-7)

This altarpiece was recorded in the 1784, when it hung above the grill in the nuns' choir through which they took Communion.  It was probably associated with payments that they made to Bartolomeo Caporali in 1476-9. 

  • Dominique-Vivant Denon, the Director of the Musée Napoleon (later the Musée du Louvre) selected the main panel for confiscation after the Napoleonic suppression of 1810, and it was duly shipped to Paris.  Antonio Canova recovered it in 1815 and it was returned to the church two years later.  The nuns then managed to hold on to it until 1870, when it entered the Galleria Nazionale (Room 18).

  • The predella, which escaped removal to France, was moved to the Accademia di Belle Arti in ca. 1839.  It entered the gallery in 1863 and was reunited with the main panel there in 1870. 

Coronation of the Virgin (1523-5)

The “Memoriale di Santa Maria di Monteluce” records that the nuns decided to commission a new altarpiece for the high altar of their church in 1503.  They asked (among others) the friars at the Convento di Monteripido who was “il maestro il migliore” (the finest master) from whom they might commission it and the answer was Raphael.  The abbess, Sister Battista duly entered into a contract with Raphael.

A supplementary contract signed in 1505 with Raphael and specified a Coronation of the Virgin that would match in quality or surpass that which Berto di GiovanniDomenico Ghirlandaio had painted for the Observant Franciscans of San Girolamo, Narni (now in the Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Narni).  They paid a deposit using a bequest from Sister Illuminata de Perinello, and Raphael promised to deliver the work within two years.  Since the contract allowed for transport costs, he clearly intended to paint it in Rome.

In 1516, the nuns sent Berto di Giovanni to Rome to press Raphael to begin work, and the contract was duly renegotiated.  (The new contract was witnessed by Alfano di Diamante, the nephew of Sister Battista, who had probably commissioned of Raphael’s so-called Conestabile Madonna in ca. 1504).  Berto di Giovanni provided a carpenter in 1518 to make the frame of the altarpiece and a "cassa” (probably a cover that protected it when it was not in use).  However, the altarpiece remained uncompleted when Raphael died in 1520.

Raphael's associates in Rome took over the commission, offering the nuns an Assumption of the Virgin by Gianfrancesco Penni, but they rejected it.  Giulio Romano seems then to have re-used the lower part of this work, which depicts the Apostles around the empty tomb, and stuck it to an upper part depicting the Coronation of the Virgin (1523-5).  The nuns accepted the result, and the panel was duly installed on the high altar.  The six predella panels commissioned from Berto di Giovanni, which were also installed at this time.

The altarpiece was dismantled in 1750.

  • The main panel was installed in a new frame on the back wall of the tribune.  It was one of three works of art in Perugia that were earmarked for confiscation by the French under the Treaty of Tolentino (1797).  Antonio Canova recovered it in 1815, when it was secured for the the Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome.  In return, Pope Leo XII gave the nuns a sum of money and the copy of the panel that can still be seen in the apse of their church.

  • The predella panels were moved to the sacristy in 1750.  Agostino Tofanelli  moved them to the Musei Capitolini, Rome in 1812.  Two of them (depicting SS Francis and Clare) were subsequently lost.  The other four (depicting the birth, presentation, marriage and death of the Virgin) were returned to the church  in 1817 and moved to the Galleria Nazionale (Room 27) in 1863.

Return to Santa Maria di Monteluce.