Perugino

Yet as the group sat amid Renaissance frescoes by the likes of Michelangelo, Botticelli and Perugino — undisputedly one of the high points of papal art patronage — not all of those present had a traditional religious bent.

Witnesses at the Vatican’s Perugino gate, one of the main entrances to the city state, told The Associated Press that Francis greeted guards as he usually does before returning to his residence.

Witnesses at the Vatican’s Perugino gate, one of the main entrances to the city state, told The Associated Press Francis returned to the Vatican a short while later, and greeted guards as he usually does.

Inside the Sistine Chapel, where in the past I have been shoved and elbowed by the crowds, about 30 spectators were awing over Perugino’s frescoes and craning to see Michelangelo’s burly musclemen on the ceiling.

The museum exhibited several of Verrocchio’s most revered works — including the bronze David from the Bargello in Florence — but it also fleshed out a sense of the Renaissance master’s larger career, his work as both a sculptor and painter, a metalworker, head of a productive studio, and a teacher or close associate of Domenico Ghirlandaio, Pietro Perugino and Sandro Botticelli.