Ornamentation of the Collegio del Cambio in Perugia

The Arte del Cambio (the moneychangers' guild) was one of the most influential of the many guilds in Perugia. In the fifteenth century it was a crucial institution in the city's power structure. Its chief responsibility was to guarantee the value of the coinage in circulation. The guild's "bottega" was something like a bank counter, where coins were appraised and their authenticity and exchange value confirmed.

The guild's headquarters are on the Corso Vannucci, right next to the Palazzo dei Priori. The structure's three ground-floor rooms have been preserved essentially in their original condition. These spaces had previously belonged to a monastery, in 1428, Pope Martin V granted the guild the use of the building. One room, the so-called Sala dei Legisti, originally was a shop, now it serves as the entrance to the Collegio del Cambio. The main room is the Sala di Udienza, while the third room is a chapel consecrated to John the Baptist.

In the Sala di Udienza the Florentine woodcarver Domenico del Tasso (1440-1508) created the inlaid paneling and the richly carved "tribunal," or judges' bench in 1491-92. Perugino was commissioned for the fresco decoration in 1496, and the entire project was completed in 1500, the date that appears prominently on a painted tablet across from Perugino's self-portrait and signature.

The design of the complex program of the fresco decoration is the work of a highly sophisticated scholar, the humanist Francesco Maturanzio (1443-1518), who had been a teacher of rhetoric and poetry in Ferrara and Vicenza before he returned to his native Perugia in 1497.

Each of the two compartments (lunettes) on the left wall presents a row of six figures standing in front of a low landscape horizon. Above these, personifications of the four cardinal virtues sit enthroned on clouds, two in each lunette. Beside each of the Virtues is an ornamental inscription tablet flanked by putti and containing a Latin distich identifying her and celebrating the exemplars below. Each trio of figures is made up of two Romans and one Greek; their names appear on the ground beneath their feet. The narrower lunettes on the back wall present two Christian themes, the Transfiguration of Christ and the Nativity. The front half of the right wall is taken up by the carved tribunal. In the lunette to the left of it are groupings of six prophets and six sibyls, each provided with a fragmentary prophecy on an inscription ribbon. God the Father appears above, holding the orb of the world. His mandorla is framed by heads of seraphim and flanked by adoring angels. The ceiling, which consists of two adjoining cross-ribbed vaults, presents the seven planetary gods on triumphal cars in round medallions, the wheels of their cars decorated with the twelve signs of the zodiac.