PERUGINO, Pietro
(b. 1450, Citta della Pieve, d. 1523, Perugia)

Filippo Benizi

1507
Oil on panel, 79 x 62 cm
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome

This painting was part of a series of eight panels painted for an altar complex in the Church of the Annunziata in Florence. The commission for the pictures was originally given to Filippino Lippi, and then was passed to Perugino, who finished the work in November of 1507. The altar was definitively dismantled and dispersed in 1654. Five other paintings from the group are known to survive; two at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, two at Altenburg and one in a private collection in South Africa.

Filippo Benizi (1233-1285) was a general superior of the Order of the Servites, and credited with reviving the order. Pope Leo X had beatified him in 1516; and Pope Clement X canonized him as a saint in 1671.

On the open book is the inscription, "SERVUS TUUS SUM EGO ET FILIUS ANCILLE TUE".