Cappella di San Severo (San Severo Chapel)

The Chapel of San Severo, first built in the XV Century, is adjacent to the church and convent of the Camaldolesi, present since the XII Century. Inside the District of Porta Sole, it’s all that remains of the XBVI Century Church, rebuilt and enlarged in the XVII Century.

Inside the chapel, commissioned by the Camaldolesi Friars, is a fresco painted by Raffaello Sanzio, between 1505 and 1508, the upper part of which portrays the Trinity, surrounded by angels and cherubim and sided by saints of the order. Called to Rome by Pope Giulio II to the painting of the Vatican Rooms, Raffaello will never finish this work, due to his premature death, in 1520. In his stead the Order called Pietro Vannucci, also Known as Perugino, who concluded the fresco with a theory of Saints in the inferior part. At the centre of the fresco a Madonna with Child in polychromic terracotta attributed to Leonardo Del Tasso, inspired by the Florentine school.

The Fresco of San Severo is a dialogue through time between two of the most important exponents of Italian Renaissance, in which the grace of Vannucci lives together with expressive power of the young Raffaello, who, right in those days, was getting to a realism and a corporeity enabling the sacred telling to exist in a new sensibility, a perfect synthesis of the renaissance humanism.   

It is the last artwork made in Perugia by Perugino, who died after only two years, and the only one remaining in town by Raffaello.