When Isabella Dalla Ragione assesses a Renaissance painting, she doesn’t immediately notice the brushstrokes or the magnificence of the imagery. The first thing she notices is the fruit. On a spring day earlier this year, I stride with Dalla Ragione into the National Gallery of Umbria, in a 14th-century stone castle built atop the hillside city of Perugia.

Umbria, a region in central Italy next to Tuscany, is known more for its lush green spaces, hillside cities and Etruscan and Roman ruins than for its art. But the painters of Renaissance Italy traveled between regions, and some of the works on display in Perugia are as awe-inspiring as those in Florence.