Benedetto Bonfigli

Influenced by the style of Domenico Veneziano, Benozzo Gozzoli, and Fra Angelico, Bonfigli primarily painted frescos for the church and was at one point employed in the Vatican.

His attention to detail in smaller areas of his paintings, as well as his use of gold to highlight both sacred and earthly elements, can be attributed to Fra Angelico.

[6] Most of Bonfigli's frescos use softer colours in the fabrics on his figures, but typically highlights the Virgin Mary in blue, an expensive dye attributed with royalty and sanctity, with a gold halo.

Bonfigli's method is also similar to his teacher, Benozzo Gozzoli, who had been Fra Angelico's assistant and had worked in Umbria from 1450 to 1456, in that he uses softer colours on the garments of his figures that brings additional depth to his paintings.

The chaplain intended to have the chapel painted with the Crucifixion with the Virgin and SS John the Evangelist, Laurence and Herculanus on the altar wall; and four scenes from the life of St Louis of Toulouse.

The left side shows Totila's army camped out around the ruins of the amphitheatre outside Porta Marzia which effected the siege when it began in 542.

The right side of the fresco shows a few citizens of Perugia laying a beheaded St Herculanus and a young boy into a grave after the city had fallen.

The city in the background provides a depiction of the Colle Landone, a hill in Perugia occupied by the Etruscans in the 4th century B.C., before the building of the Roman wall Rocca Paolina in 1540.

The fresco shows historical buildings of Perugia, including the Porta Marzia, the church of Sant' Ercolano, and the towers of Baglioni palaces.

[13] One of Bonfigli's best-preserved works, the Annunciation depicts Mother Mary receiving two small flames into her heart from the Dove of the Holy Spirit, sent down by God surrounded by cherubs.

[6] Bonfigli uses gold not only to accentuate the divine elements in the piece, but also in the greater, more earthly areas of the sky and textiles worn by Mary and the angel.

Bonfigli contrasts the Gothic details of the piece with classical ones, including the low wall separating the foreground and background which appears to be more modern in material and design.

This piece is often compared with Veneziano's earliest dated work, Adoration of the Magi, held in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, where Bonfigli derived the sense of depth created by the pine trees in the middle of the painting.

Bonfigli did not rank as high as other Renaissance artists of his time, including Niccolo da Foligno, his fellow pupil under Gozzoli.

As Bernhard Berenson writes in his book, "far was it from [Bonfigli] to harbour a feeling... for what in painting is more essential than charming faces and pretty colour".

[14] Others argue that much of Bonfigli's work was critical in the birth of the Umbria school of art, that had lagged behind Florence and Northern Italy until the mid 15th century, but quickly rose as a first rank with Perugino, his student, and then Raphael.