The Marriage of the Virgin, also known as Lo Sposalizio, is an oil painting by the Italian High Renaissance artist Raphael. Completed in 1504 for the Franciscan church of San Francesco, Città di Castello, the painting depicts a marriage ceremony between Mary and Joseph. It changed hands several times before settling in 1806 at the Pinacoteca di Brera.
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Italian Renaissance painting is the painting of the period beginning in the late 13th century and flourishing from the early 15th to late 16th centuries, occurring in the Italian Peninsula, which was at that time divided into many political states, some independent but others controlled by external powers. The painters of Renaissance Italy, although often attached to particular courts and with loyalties to particular towns, nonetheless wandered the length and breadth of Italy, often occupying a diplomatic status and disseminating artistic and philosophical ideas.
The city of Florence in Tuscany is renowned as the birthplace of the Renaissance, and in particular of Renaissance painting, although later in the era Rome and Venice assumed increasing importance in painting. A detailed background is given in the companion articles Renaissance art and Renaissance architecture. Italian Renaissance painting is most often divided into four periods: the Proto-Renaissance (1300–1425), the Early Renaissance (1425–1495), the High Renaissance (1495–1520), and Mannerism (1520–1600). The dates for these periods represent the overall trend in Italian painting and do not cover all painters as the lives of individual artists and their personal styles overlapped these periods.
The Marriage of the Virgin is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Perugino, although it is now sometimes attributed to his pupil Lo Spagna. It depicts the marriage between Joseph and Mary, and is now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Caen, France. Initially commissioned to Pinturicchio for the recently completed cathedral of Perugia, Perugino took over the commission and finished the work around 1500–1504, probably after several periods of stasis.
A very similar composition was painted by unknown artists (sometimes attributed to Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, probable teacher of Perugino or Rocco Zoppo, assistant of Perugino) for the church of San Girolamo in Spello in 1492. Which (if present scholarship is correct) is about ten years earlier than Perugino's and Raphael's treatments of the same subject. The composition of the earlier work does not utilize the elegant central perspective appearing in Perugino's and Raphael's more famous works. However, the figures in the foreground are very similar to both later paintings, including the unmistakable young man breaking the rod.