Perino del Vaga

Buonaccorsi, Pietro

Italian, 1501 - 1547

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Italian painter (1501–1547)

Explore Selected Works

Perino del Vaga, Alexander Consecrating the Altars for the Twelve Olympian Gods, 1545/1547, pen and brown ink with gray wash over black chalk on laid paper; laid down, Woodner Collection, Gift of Dian Woodner, 2011.42.1

Alexander Consecrating the Altars for the Twelve Olympian Gods

Perino del Vaga · 1545/1547 · pen and brown ink with gray wash over black chalk on laid paper; laid down ·  Accession ID  2011.42.1

Five men and two women gather around an infant in a landscape in this vertical painting. The people all have pale or peachy skin with delicate facial features. Halos, like gold rings, float behind each head. All the men but one have beards, and most of the people’s lips are parted. The pudgy baby, Jesus, lies nude on a white cloth on the grassy ground near the bottom center of the composition. Three people kneel around and look down at him. To our left, a man wearing a fur-lined, powder-blue tunic under a rose-pink robe crosses his arms to touch opposite shoulders. A tall staff with a gold cross at the top rests in one elbow. Just behind Jesus, a woman wearing a gold crown and sage-green and pink robes holds a palm frond in one hand and extends the other over the baby. To our right, Mary wears a gold diadem and an apple-red dress. The cloak billowing behind her shoulders and fluttering to our right is emerald green on one side and silvery blue on the other. She also crosses her hands over her shoulders. Four men stand behind the group. Starting behind Mary, to our right, a man faces our left in profile. He holds a tall staff in one hand and points at Mary with the index finger of the other. The next man looks at the first with his hand held by his own face, the first two fingers splayed over his beard near his mouth. Next, another man looks down at Jesus with his hands together in prayer by the shoulder farther from us. These three men wear robes in canary yellow, burnt orange, dark blue, vivid green, or raspberry pink. The fourth man, along the left edge of the painting, is nude except for a coral-orange and yellow cloth tied around his hips. He has short brown hair and is cleanshaven. The feathered ends of three arrows project from his torso and three more wounds on his neck, shoulder, and thigh trickle blood. He holds an arrow by his side with one hand and reaches out with this other to hold the first two fingers and thumb up over Jesus. A gray stone building rises along the right edge of the composition behind the group. A person wearing a white tunic, red robe, and a straw-colored hat climbs a set of stairs there. That person holds a long staff over one shoulder and carries a lamb by the animal’s four legs in the other. In the sky above the main group, a bearded man a triangular halo over gray hair floats among about a dozen winged, child-like angels on a cloud bank. The man holds up one hand in blessing and holds an orb topped with a cross in the other hand. A bank of winged baby heads clusters in the distance, farther along the cloud bank. A few people, tiny in scale, sit or walk through the landscape, which leads back to ice-blue, craggy mountains. Cream-white and muted blue clouds fill the sky above. The artist signed the work as if he had left an inscribed tablet near Jesus. It reads, “M.D.XXXIIII. PERINO BONAC CORSSI FLORENTIN OPVS FACEBA.” The letters of the artist’s name, PERINO, are then combined into two monograms.
Perino del Vaga, The Nativity, 1534, oil on panel transferred to canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.31

The Nativity

Perino del Vaga · 1534 · oil on panel transferred to canvas ·  Accession ID  1961.9.31

Perino del Vaga, Figure Studies [recto], c. 1530/1540, pen and brown ink on laid paper, Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund, 1980.31.1.a

Figure Studies [recto]

Perino del Vaga · c. 1530/1540 · pen and brown ink on laid paper ·  Accession ID  1980.31.1.a

Drawings of bodies fill the left half of this vertical, parchment-colored paper, and writing fills the right half. The drawings and writing are in dark brown ink, and lines from the other side of the sheet show through, creating blurred forms. On the left, several nude male bodies are loosely drawn and appear upside down in this view. Their actions are indistinct but they gesture and turn. The right half is filled with horizontal lines of hand-written text and numbers. A vertical line splitting the two halves was presumably made when folded in half at some point in the sheet's history.
Perino del Vaga, Figure Studies [verso], c. 1530/1540, pen and brown ink on laid paper (red chalk line across center), Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund, 1980.31.1.b

Figure Studies [verso]

Perino del Vaga · c. 1530/1540 · pen and brown ink on laid paper (red chalk line across center) ·  Accession ID  1980.31.1.b

Perino del Vaga, Altarpiece of the Madonna and Child with Saints, in Its Architectural Setting, 1528/1537, pen and brown ink on laid paper, Gift of The Circle of the National Gallery of Art, 1988.34.1

Altarpiece of the Madonna and Child with Saints, in Its Architectural Setting

Perino del Vaga · 1528/1537 · pen and brown ink on laid paper ·  Accession ID  1988.34.1