ANGIOLINO PERPETUA

Innovative, eco-friendly and with a unique and original design: the inkless pen ‘Perpetua’, customised with the Angel playing the lute, painted in 1521 by Rosso Fiorentino (Florence 1495 – Paris 1540).

This famous work, featuring a child angel plucking the strings of a lute, is a fragment of a lost altarpiece; underneath the dark background, added retrospectively, reflectographic studies have revealed part of a building, at the base of which the musical angel would have stood in the manner of certain compositions by Fra’ Bartolomeo or Raphael. The original composition can be inferred from the Sacred Conversation painted in around 1600 by Francesco Vanni and housed in the church of Sant’Agata ad Asciano in Siena.
Underneath the dark background of this painting in the Uffizi, reflectographic studies have also revealed the name of the artist, Rosso Fiorentino, and the date 1521, but it is not certain whether the handwriting is Rosso’s own or if it was added when the altarpiece was dismantled in an effort to preserve the knowledge of its authorship.