Monday, May 29, 2017

Excellent Luca Signorelli

Luca Signorelli
Conversion of Paul
ca. 1477-82
fresco
Basilica della Santa Casa, Loreto

Luca Signorelli
Flagellation
ca. 1480
tempera on panel
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Luca Signorelli
Pala di Sant'Onofrio
1484
oil on panel
Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Perugia

"Luca Signorelli, an excellent painter, of whom, according to the order of time, we have now to speak, was more famous throughout Italy in his day, and his works were held in greater price than has ever been the case with any other master at any time whatsoever, for the reason that in the works that he executed in painting  he showed the true method of making nudes, and how they can be caused, although only with art and difficulty, to appear alive."

 Giorgio Vasari, from his Life of Luca Signorelli of Cortona, Painter (1568)

"Vasari, who claimed to be a distant relative of Signorelli, wrote a well-informed biography of the painter, celebrating his fame and success in terms that modern critics consider somewhat overestimated."

 curator's notes from the National Gallery of Art

"This work [a devotional painting by Signorelli] was brought from Cortona to Arezzo on the shoulders of the men of that Company; and Luca, old as he was, insisted on coming to set it in place, and partly also in order to revisit his friends and relatives.  And since he lodged in the house of the Vasari, in which I then was, a little boy of eight years old, I remember that the good old man, who was most gracious and courteous, having heard from the master who was teaching me my first letters, that I gave my attention to nothing in lesson-time save to drawing figures, I remember, I say, that he turned to my father Antonio and said to him: 'Antonio, if you wish little Giorgio not to become backward, by all means let him learn to draw, for, even were he to devote himself to letters, design cannot be otherwise than helpful, honorable, and advantageous to him, as it is to every gentleman.'  Then, turning to me, who was standing in front of him, he said: 'Mind your lessons, little kinsman.'  He said many other things about me, which I withhold, for the reason that I know that I have failed by a great measure to justify the opinion which the good old man had of me.  And since he heard, as was true, that the blood used to flow from my nose at that age in such quantities that this left me sometimes half dead, with infinite lovingness he bound a jasper round my neck with his own hand; and this memory of Luca will stay forever fixed in my mind."

 Giorgio Vasari, from his Life of Luca Signorelli of Cortona, Painter (1568)

Luca Signorelli
Nude youths carrying young woman and young man
ca. 1490-95
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin

Luca Signorelli
Portrait of an older man
1492
oil and tempera on panel
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Luca Signorelli
Madonna and Child enthroned with Saints and Angels
1490s
oil and tempera on panel
Pinacoteca e Museo Civico, Volterra

Luca Signorelli
Holy Family with Saints Zachary, Elizabeth and St John the Baptist
 after 1512
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Luca Signorelli
Lamentation
1502
tempera on panel
Museo Diocesano di Cortona

The large Lamentation altarpiece (above) still retains four miniature predella paintings (below) with earlier scenes from the Passion of Christ. These compressed and elongated images are built-in along the bottom of the panel, end-to-end  as ornamental extensions of the storytelling.

Luca Signorelli
Lamentation predella - Last Supper
1502
tempera on panel
Museo Diocesano di Cortona

Luca Signorelli
Lamentation predella - Agony in the Garden
1502
tempera on panel
Museo Diocesano di Cortona

Luca Signorelli
Lamentation predella - Betrayal of Christ
1502
tempera on panel
Museo Diocesano di Cortona

Luca Signorelli
Lamentation predella - Flagellation
1502
tempera on panel
Museo Diocesano di Cortona

Luca Signorelli
Coronation of the Virgin
1508
oil and tempera on panel
San Diego Museum of Art

Luca Signorelli
Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels
ca. 1515-19
oil on panel
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC