The Entombment of Christ, with the Virgin, Mary Magdalene, Nicodemus, Saint John the Evangelist and other Saints

Giannicola di Paolo, who trained under Pietro Perugino with whom he collaborated, was the most able–and productive–of the Perugian near-contemporaries of Raphael. His independent development can be followed from such works as the Ognissanti altarpiece of 1506-07 from San Domenico at Perugia (Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia), still strongly Peruginesque, to the frescoes of the vault of the chapel of the Collegio del Cambio at Perugia (1513-5) and those of the lateral walls there (1526-8), in which he responded to recent developments in both Florence and Siena. While he may have lacked the intellectual interests of his fellow Perugian, Giovanni Battista Caporali, an early translator of Vitriuvius, he was for Prof. Filippo Todini the greatest Perugian artist of the early cinquecento (‘il maggior artista del primo Cinquecento’).

This panel, presumably intended as the altarpiece in a relatively small chapel, was considered in 1933 by Giuseppe Fiocco to be a work of about 1495 by Perugino, a view that reflects its exceptional quality. Todini published it as by Giannicola in 1989 (loc. cit.) and confirmed this view at the time of its sale in 2019 (see provenance). While deeply Peruginesque in character, the painting does not depend on either of the altarpieces of related subjects Perugino supplied in the 1490s for Florentine churches, the San Giusto fuori le Mura Pietà and the Santa Chiara Lamentation (Palazzo Pitti, Florence), both of which Giannicola would have known, or the Williamstown Pietà (Clark Art Institute, Williamstown Massachusetts, inv. no. 1955.947), which was likely unknown to him, as it was painted in Venice. But Giannicola clearly sought to emulate the skilfully compacted composition of the Santa Chiara picture. The present painting is datable to circa 1510.