CHAPTER XVII

OF A DANDIFIED STIGGINS OF VAST HAND'S SKILL

WE must go back for a moment to Piero della Francesca, or Dei Franceschi, whom we saw as pupil to Domenico Veneziano and under the influence of Uccello, and with a keen scientific eagerness for perspective and desire to create depth in painting, writing a Treatise on Perspective. Piero dei Franceschi is often classed amongst the Umbrians, but Umbrian he was not by birth or temperament.

Franceschi's teaching brought forth two pupils who were to reach to mastery-Melozzo da Forlì and Luca Signorelli.

Of the life of MELOZZO DA FORLÌ (1438-1494) little is known. Born at Forli in the Romagna, he worked at Rome about 1472 for Cardinal Riario, nephew to Pope Sixtus IV., and for him painted frescoes in the church of the S. Apostoli, of which some fragments remain, now in the sacristy of St. Peter's and on the staircase of the Quirinal ; but all such works of his as are known show his mastery of movement and depth of space learnt from Franceschi, and his own personal intensity of emotional statement. Melozzo was made one of the original members of the Academy of St. Luke in Rome, when founded by Pope Sixtus IV.

Of Melozzo da Forlì's pupils was GIOVANNI SANTI (1435?-1494), to become the father of the greater Santi, the renowned Raphael ; and the prolific painter MARCO PALMEZZANO (1456?-1543), the last of the short-lived Romagnoli school.

[132] Franceschi's second and greatest pupil, Luca Signorelli, was to come to wide distinction, and was to have as wide influence.

LUCA SIGNORELLI
1441 - 1523

Luca d'Egidio di Ventura, to be better known to fame as Luca Signorelli, born at Cortona, was apprenticed to Piero dei Franceschi at Arezzo ; he became strongly impressed by the art of the brothers Poliamoli. Luca Signorelli is-on the tense and dramatic side of the Florentine achievement, as is Botticelli on the spiritual side-intensely moved by the Greek spirit that was overwhelming the Florentine genius-is indeed, perhaps, more really " the reanimate Greek "-for his aim is even more the Greek aim of pure beauty than is Botticelli's ; but he adds to it the high Florentine dramatic sense, caught from his Florentine masters.

Cortona is but just without the southern boundary of Tuscany, on the road to Rome; and along that road to Rome the Florentine genius was about to travel in ever-increasing stream, even while Signorelli lived, and in the doing was to come to a sudden ultimate glory, reaching to majestic heights of achievement, thereafter to wither like a garden smitten by the blasting breath of the desert.

Signorelli was to become a master of the nude. His astounding skill in painting the figure and of expressing movement in the nude, from the natural swing of the body to its most violent actions, his wonderful sense of the glow of flesh, and his fascinating sense of rhythm in composition, make him one of the great masters of the Florentine Renaissance.

Of Signorelli's earlier work is the superb Pan at Berlin, a masterpiece marked by spaciousness, and a severity almost [133] as of sculpture. Here we see the type of woman he created with powerful chin, full forehead, and stern mouth. Signorelli has the dramatic power and traffic sadness of the Florentine genius in great abundance, a fierceness of energy, through which runs a strange tenderness ; he has, besides, a feeling for pure beauty and grace more than Florentine. In his frescoes at Orvieto, wrought between 1499 and 1502, he seems to have set himself the task of painting the human body in every conceivable position, as though the problem of movement were his whole aim-a Dantesque desire to state the most violent emotions, they are rated as being of his supreme achievement ; the fresco of the End of the World produced a profound effect on the art of Michelangelo, in whose fresco of The Last Judgment, at the Sistine Chapel in Rome, the influence of Signorelli is most marked.

Vasari's statement that Signorelli himself painted two frescoes from the History of Moses in the Sistine Chapel at Rome has been challenged by modern criticism, which attributes them to Pinturicchio-though Vasari, for all his rambling gossip, is often wonderfully correct. There is no challenge as to Signorelli having painted the frescoes in the Santa Casa of Loreto and the cloisters of Monte Oliveto Maggiore of Scenes from the Life of St. Benedict.

Luca Signorelli came to high honour in his native city of Cortona, where he was made a Member of the Council of Eighteen, and held other high offices as Prior, Member of the General Council, Prior of the Fraternity of St. Mark, and Syndic. His later years were lived amidst great affluence and splendour. His mortal remains were laid to rest in Cortona, where he died, in 1523, in his eighty-second year.

Signorelli's mother was sister to Lazzaro, great-grandfather of Giorgio Vasari, the famous chronicler [134] of the lives of the Italian artists. He seems to have been a sincere friend, fond of society, and socially ambitious-not above an hypocrisy, ever ready to turn aside enmity with a pretty, sometimes a Stiggins-like compliment. A dandy in his habits, dressing handsomely, he lived in splendour, and his own city and the world at large consequently honoured him.

An iron will and profound sensing were the abundant gifts of Luca Signorelli. His effect on the Florentine achievement was prodigious. His significance in art is the daring and boldness with which he thrust forward the range of utterance of the instrument of painting to express sublime and tragic intensity. He largely forestalled Michelangelo, not only in his expression of the nude, but in his resolute and forceful desire to give utterance to the sublime emotions and the tragic passions in terms of pure form, reckless of the suave qualities of colour. To this grip upon the human figure he bent all his powers-from the graveyard and the gibbet he took subjects for dissection ; and his art was as marked for its audacity in seeking into the emotions as was his will in getting subjects for his training. His firm and true line never deserts him. In an age of pedantry and ornamentation he sternly set his great powers to the utterance of mighty tragedies, playing upon the forms of the human body to render the significance of life.

His son, a youth of great personal beauty, whom he greatly loved, being killed in a duel at Cortona, was brought to the grief-stricken father. Signorelli uttered no word of woe or complaint. Without a tear he ordered them to strip the seventeen-years-old lad naked, and, where he lay, he painted him, so that he might have with him always the beauty of his beloved son.