"It is nice that even works that have always been used to showing themselves in the intimacy of private collections can enjoy a wider audience, as will happen for a few months to the splendid Madonna and Child whose relevance to the collection of the National Gallery of Umbria is clearly testified by the many sisters who welcome her from the walls of the museum ".

With these words Marco Pierini, Director of the National Gallery of Umbria, welcomed inside the museum the precious painting attributed to Pinturicchio recovered by the Cultural Heritage Protection Unit after thirty years from the theft, perpetrated against a Perugian collector in 1990. At the end of a fruitful investigation with complex international branches, coordinated by the famous Carabinieri department that has been collaborating with the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities for fifty years, before being returned to its legitimate owners, the painting will be exposed to the public until 6 January 2020 in room 24 of the museum itinerary, next to the altarpiece of Santa Maria de 'Fossi and the banner from the Church of Sant'Agostino.

A new opportunity, therefore, to turn a spotlight on Bernardino di Betto, Bartolomeo Caporali and Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, the three authors to whom the historical-critical story of this panel is connected and, more generally, on the Perugian art scene of the ' 80 of the fifteenth century, ready to make Verrocchio 's models their own - among which, in fact, the lucky "madonnas of the windowsill" which inspired this precious tempera - imported into the city through Pietro Vannucci just back from his formative experience Florentine.

This temporary exhibition of the work therefore constitutes not only an opportunity, almost a "case of school", to enhance the permanent exhibition path of the museum but its adventurous discovery and the attribution issues concerning it are destined to stimulate curiosity and comparisons of sure interest both for the public and for scholars.