The Workshop and its Painters: Perugino and the Perugineschi in Florence and Perugia

The project's overall aim is to contribute to a deeper understanding of the management and operation of painting workshops in Renaissance Italy. The Workshop and its Painters draws on the case study of Perugino to challenge our understanding of the vast amount of serial and derivative paintings produced within the workshops of Florentine master painters in the late-15th and early-16th centuries. These 'copies' of the commissioned images of master painters are paintings that are commonly ignored in the discussion of individual masters, yet were produced in great numbers in the workshops of nearly every Italian master painter.

The research will involve investigation of how Perugino managed production and used - and reused - material in two workshops, as well as how individual works were made by numerous assistants. Perugino, an artist who for several decades maintained separate workshops in the cities of Florence and Perugia is an ideal case with which to examine workshop issues and to investigate regional approaches to painting. Perugino is also an apt subject for doctoral study because his 'workshop' works are numerous, the documentary record is rich, and the secondary scholarship on his life, work and technique is wide-ranging. The painter presents a set of problems that have the potential to widen our understanding of differing approaches to technique and production, to unravel the connections between the two locations of work in practical terms, and to identify some of the details of workaday procedures involved in their management.

The aims:

- to deepen our knowledge of the range of production processes and technical skills used in the workshops of Perugino, one of the most productive of 15th-century painters workshops
- to widen our comprehension of the skills and visual value in 'workshop' production
- to contribute significantly to the knowledge base of paintings in the NG's collection.

The objectives are to:

- select a representative sample of pictures by Perugino and his workshops, starting with those from the NG's Collection, on which to focus the inquiry
- establish the technical data available relating to the selected pictures and to works by Perugino and his workshop more generally, in published sources, the grey literature and in the records of the NG and other institutions
- review the relevant secondary literature on Perugino and the Perugineschi artists
- consult the primary documentary sources relevant to Perugino in Italian archives and to visit the Archivi di Stato in Florence and Perugia
- address the impact of regional and local customs on the functioning of Perugino's different workshops
- draw together the comparative data to give a clear sense of the similarities and differences between Perugino's workshop's activity in several centres of production: particularly Florence and Perugia and to address specific research questions.

The project requires a set of appropriate works of art, an extensive collection of secondary material on Perugino and the Perugineschi artists, archival records, and technical data that elucidates the techniques involved in making the works. The Warburg and the NG are perhaps ideal partners for this project: the Warburg Institute specialises in research on the Italian Renaissance and its Library has extensive holdings, including the often-obscure publications the project will need, on Italian Renaissance art, as well as a large image library, while the NG has one of the finest Renaissance painting collections in the world, as well as a unique history of integrating scientific and technical research within the contexts of curatorial and conservation activity.

Investigation of technique is an important part of evaluating production methods, and NG offers unprecedented facilities for the technical examination of pictures and for comparison, at a fundamental level, of works of art with others from similar places of production.