Pope Sixtus IV, an enlightened and generous…

Pope Sixtus IV, an enlightened and generous patron of arts and letters; builds the Sistine Chapel.

Sixtus commissions numerous artists between 1481 and 1483 to produce fourteen fresco decorations, illustrating the lives of Moses and Christ, along the walls.

Perugino, by October 1481, is in Rome, called here together with Cosimo Rosselli, Sandro Botticelli, and Domenico Ghirlandaio by Sixtus to decorate the Sistine Chapel. (Ghirlandaio works almost exclusively in Florence except for his trip to Rome in 1481-82.)

One of Perugino's (surviving) Sistine frescoes—”Christ Giving the Keys to Saint Peter,” painted in 1481-88—expands the painted space to suggest a new, luminous sense of infinity, thus transcending the rationalized, circumscribed framework defined by Florentine artists earlier in the century.

Another early work, the altarpiece “Crucifixion with Saints,” executed in 1481, exemplifies Perugino's vast, mountainous landscapes, adorned by feathery trees and inhabited by tranquil, graceful figures.

Pinturicchio, rivaled as a fresco painter in Umbria only by Perugino, probably assists the latter in painting the side walls of the Sistine Chapel between 1481 and 1484.

Some scholarly disagreement exists about the artists involved in each of the Sistine chapel’s paintings, as well as the titles of these, but generally the assignments are as follows.

South wall: “Moses and Zipporah in Egypt and the Circumcision of Their Son” by Pinturicchio, “Moses in Egypt and Midian” by Botticelli, “The Passage of the Red Sea” by Cosimo Rosselli and Piero di Cosimo, “Moses on Mount Sinai and the Worship of the Golden Calf” by Cosimo Rosselli, “The Punishment of Korah” by Botticelli, and “Moses Giving the Rod and the Death of Moses” by Luca Signorelli and Bartolommeo della Gatta.

North wall: “Baptism of Christ” by Perugino and Pinturicchio, “Cleansing of the Leper and Temptation in the Wilderness” by Botticelli, “Calling of Peter and Andrew” by Ghirlandaio, “Sermon on the Mount and Healing of the Leper” by Cosimo Rosselli and Piero di Cosimo, “Christ Giving the Keys to Saint Peter” by Perugino, and “Last Supper” by Cosimo Rosselli. (Two other wall frescoes, Ghirlandaio's “Resurrection” and Cecchino Salviati's “Michael Defending the Body of Moses,” will be repainted in the sixteenth century.)