Pietro Perugino! Some Research and stuff

Okay, so Perugino is really cool. He's a sort of precursory painter to the High Renaissance movement. He most likely began studying painting in Perugia, in local workshops around the town. He was apparently one of the first Italian practitioners of oil painting, though he also dabbled in cartooning, oddly enough. He is known to have excelled in perspective painting, which he learned from

An excellent example of some of his very early work is the piece Madonna with Child Enthroned Between Saints, painted early in his career in 1493, I believe.

This piece is interesting because we see Perugino pushing the "Holy Conversion" style that was sweeping Venice at the time. We see the Virgin Mary on an elevated platform above the saints, sort of elevating her status and cementing that holy iconography as the mother of Christ. Bellini does the same thing his his depictions of Mary and Christ on the throne, albeit in a stronger manner (I think, at least.) 

There's a pyramidal development of the composition overall, centering on Mary and creating a strong triangle with her as the focus. There is also an element of severity to Mary; she's been stripped of a bit of her elegance, and she is no longer portrayed as a delicate little maiden. She looks much more mature and somber, befitting her elevated status above John the Baptist and Saint Sebastian. The depiction of Saint Sebastian is fairly standard, showing him being martyred by arrows. 

We also see fairly standard depictions of the architecture echoing Gothic detail, with a pretty serene and detached landscape behind them. 

So yeah, early Perugino. More posts to come soon!