Pietro di Cristoforo Vannucci, italian painter, the greatest painter of the Umbrian school, active mainly in Perugia. He studied under Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, assisted Piero della Francesca at Arezzo, and in the early 1470s was a fellow pupil of Leonardo da Vinci and Lorenzo di Credi in Verrocchio's studio in Florence.
In 1479 Perugino was summoned to Rome by Pope Sixtus IV to help decorate the Sistine Chapel.
He is recorded in the 1481 contract for the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel along with Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Cosimo Rosselli, where his Christ Handing the Keys to St Peter demonstrates his qualities of simplicity, order and clearly articulated composition.