A Perugino Masterpiece Lands in New York for Sotheby’s Old Masters Week

After transforming its new Breuer headquarters into a cultural landmark—hosting museum-grade works for sale alongside iconic loan exhibitions, Sotheby’s is now positioning itself as an active collaborator with international museums and a platform for promoting national cultural heritage. In an unprecedented partnership, the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria is lending the auction house a masterpiece by Perugino, soon to be on view in New York on the occasion of its upcoming Old Masters sales series. Underwriting the operation is Italian fashion house Brunello Cucinelli, in an alignment of luxury marketing and cultural patronage, as both the brand and the auction house turn to heritage and historically validated masterworks for enduring symbolic capital.

The cimasa from Pietro Perugino’s Decemviri Altarpiece, a Renaissance treasure dated 1495 from the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, will be displayed alongside other gems presented in the sales, including the exceedingly rare Ecce Homo by Antonello da Messina and a captivating drawing of a resting lion consigned by American billionaire investor, collector and philanthropist Thomas S. Kaplan to fund his wildlife conservation organization, Panthera. The loan of the cimasa marks one of the few times the precious work has left the Priory Chapel in Perugia’s Palazzo dei Priori—today part of the museum—for which it was originally commissioned.

According to the museum’s director, Costantino D’Orazio, the goal is to raise awareness among American audiences of the institution’s collection and, more broadly, of Umbria’s extraordinary contributions to Italian history and culture. He described the cimasa of the Decemviri Altarpiece in a statement as one of the most profound and emblematic works in the collection, and one of the “purest expressions of Perugino’s art at the height of his career.” For over five centuries, it has remained in the chapel for which it was conceived, inseparable from the city’s history and identity. “Allowing it to travel outside of Perugia for the first time is an act of great responsibility, but also of conviction.”

Notably, the initiative also marks the launch of Friends of Umbria, a project conceived by the National Museums of Umbria with art collector Dr. Mitchell Levine to engage potential U.S. patrons in supporting the assets and activities of the region’s national museum network. Beginning in 2026, U.S. citizens will be able to make donations through an agreement between the National Museums of Umbria and the Myriad Foundation, an organization active worldwide in fundraising for the conservation and protection of artistic and cultural heritage.

George Wachter, Sotheby’s chairman of Old Master Paintings, described the collaboration as a shared commitment to scholarship, trust and care. Seeing the work enter into dialogue with artists who themselves fell under Perugino’s spell, Wachter added, lends particular resonance to the sale, highlighting lines of historical influence and exchange across the works offered this season. “This painting carries immense historical and spiritual significance, and its presence during Old Masters Week invites a broader conversation around scholarship, discovery, and lineage—one that stands in dialogue with the great works of art across the centuries being offered at auction this week,” Wachter told Observer.

While the sale does not include other artists from the Umbrian school of the same period, Sotheby’s Old Masters Week auctions will bring to the rostrum works by Perugino’s contemporaries from across Italy, offering a broader snapshot of late 15th-century painting. Highlights include the elegant and emotionally charged Saint Ursula by Venetian painter Alvise Vivarini (estimate $400,000-600,000); a rare and eloquent example of Florentine artist Biagio d’Antonio’s skill as a portraitist ($800,000-1,200,000); and, of course, the striking double-sided, pocket-size panel Ecce Homo; Saint Jerome in Penitence by Hypo. The sale also features a magisterial Madonna and Child Enthroned attributed to the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio (estimate $700,000-1,000,000).

Raphael’s master and mentor, Perugino introduced a serene visual register and a mastery of atmosphere that departed from the narrative density and symbolic weight characteristic of much late quattrocento painting. His figures, idealized yet never monumental, avoid performative emotional drama in favor of poised inwardness and quiet naturalism—an approach that would profoundly shape the compositional clarity and grace later perfected by Raphael, who will be celebrated with an unprecedented major survey opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art at the end of March.

The significance of Pietro Perugino’s cimasa

Painted at the height of Perugino’s career, the cimasa captures Christ at his most miraculous yet fragile moment, emerging from the tomb against an almost entirely black background—a striking and highly unusual choice for a Renaissance depiction of the Resurrection, which is more often bathed in light. According to the Bible, the Resurrection took place at night, and here Perugino sets aside pictorial convention in favor of a composition that adheres to the written text. The result is an image of stark isolation and theological concentration, heightening the viewer’s encounter with Christ and reinforcing the painting’s devotional charge.

Behind the painting lies a complex history of loss and displacement. In 1797, for the first time in its existence, the central panel of the altarpiece was removed by Napoleon’s agents and taken to Paris. The upper section was left behind, where it came to stand as a powerful symbol of what had been taken. The two elements were reunited only briefly in 2019 and 2020 under a special agreement with the Vatican Museums, where the central panel ultimately found a permanent home.

After debuting at Sotheby’s Breuer headquarters, where it will be on view through February 4, the cimasa will travel to Midtown Manhattan for a temporary loan at the Morgan Library, where it will be shown in dialogue with a Giovanni Bellini Pietà.

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