Painter, born in Cortona, C Italy. He painted many frescoes at Loreto, Rome, Florence, Siena, Cortona, and Orvieto, where the cathedral contains his greatest work, the frescoes of The Preaching of Anti-Christ and The Last Judgment (15004). He was one of the painters summoned by the Pope in 1508 to adorn the Vatican, and dismissed to make way for Raphael.
Luca Signorelli (c.1445 - October 16, 1523) was a Tuscan Renaissance painter.
Biography
He was born Luca d'Egidio di Ventura in Cortona, Tuscany (some sources call him Luca da Cortona).
His first impressions of art seem to be due to Perugia — the style of Bonfigli, Fiorenzo and Pinturicchio. In 1472 the young man was painting at Arezzo, and in 1474 at Città di Castello. it is almost the same subject which he painted also on the wall of the Petrucci palace in Siena — the principal figures being Pan himself, Olympus, Echo, a man reclining on the ground and two listening shepherds.
He executed, moreover, various sacred pictures, showing a study of Botticelli and Lippo Lippi. Pope Sixtus IV commissioned Signorelli to paint some frescoes, now mostly very dim, in the shrine of Loreto — Angels, Doctors of the Church, Evangelists, Apostles, the Incredulity of Thomas and the Conversion of St Paul. another, Moses and Zipporah, which has been usually ascribed to Signorelli, is now recognized as the work of Perugino.
Luca may have stayed in Rome from 1478-1484. In the convent of Chiusuri (Sienna), he painted eight frescoes, forming part of a vast series of the life of St Benedict; In the palace of Pandolfo Petrucci he worked upon various classic or mythological subjects, including the School of Pan already mentioned.
Work in Orvieto
From Siena he went to Orvieto, and produced his masterpiece. The works of Signorelli represent the events leading up to the Last Judgment, with the Pomp and the Fall of Antichrist, and the Eternal Destiny of Man, and occupy three vast lunettes, each of them a single picture. To Angelico's ceiling Signorelli added a section showing figures blowing trumpets, etc.; There is also a great deal of subsidiary work connected with Dante, and with the poets and legends of antiquity. Other murals in the chapel depict the Doctors of the Church and Martyrs of the Church, an explicit reference to two important Orvietan martyrs in the centuries preceding the execution of the lunette paintings.
The daring and terrible inventions, with their powerful treatment of the nude and arduous foreshortenings, were striking in its day. Michelangelo is claimed to have borrowed, in his own fresco at the Sistine Chapel wall, some of Signorelli's figures or combinations.
The contract for his work is still on record. Signorelli's first stay in Orvieto lasted not more than two years.
Work in Siena, Cortona, Rome, and Arezzo
After finishing the frecoes at Orvieto, Signorelli was much in Siena.
In 1508 Pope Julius II determined to readorn the camere of the Vatican Palace, and he summoned to Rome Signorelli, in company with Perugino, Pinturicchio and Bazzi (Sodoma). He continued constantly at work, but the performances of his closing years were not of special mark.
In 1520 he went with one of his pictures to Arezzo. He was partially paralysed when he began a fresco of the Baptism of Christ in the chapel of Cardinal Passerini's palace near Cortona, which (or else a "Coronation of the Virgin" at Foiano) is the last picture of his specified. Signorelli stood in great repute as a citizen.
Signorelli paid great attention to anatomy, carrying on his studies in burial grounds.
He is described as kindly, a family man, according to Vasari, he always lived more like a nobleman than a painter. The Torrigiani Gallery in Florence contains a grand life-sized portrait by Signorelli of a man in a red cap and vest, and corresponds with Vasari's observation. In the National Gallery, London, are the "Circumcision of Jesus" and three other works. Signorelli also depicted himself in the left foreground of his Orvietan mural "The Rule of Antichrist".
See F Vischer, Signorelli und die italienische Renaissance (1879); Burlington Fine Arts Club, Exhibition of Work of Signorelli, etc.
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