LIFE OF LUCA SIGNORELLI OF CORTONA
[_LUCA DA CORTONA_]
PAINTER
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. He was a
pupil and disciple of Piero dal Borgo a San Sepolcro, and greatly
did he strive in his youth to imitate his master, and even to
surpass him; and the while that he was working with Piero at Arezzo,
living in the house of his uncle Lazzaro Vasari, as it has been
told, he imitated the manner of the said Piero so well that the one
could scarcely be distinguished from the other.
The first works of Luca were in S. Lorenzo at Arezzo, where he
painted the Chapel of S. Barbara in fresco in the year 1472; and he
painted for the Company of S. Caterina, on cloth and in oil, the
banner that is borne in processions, and likewise that of the
Trinità, although this does not appear to be by the hand of Luca,
but by Piero dal Borgo himself. In S. Agostino in the same city he
painted the panel of S. Niccola da Tolentino, with most beautiful
little scenes, executing the work with good drawing and invention;
and in the same place, in the Chapel of the Sacrament, he made two
angels wrought in fresco. In the Chapel of the Accolti in the Church
of S. Francesco, for Messer Francesco, Doctor of Laws, he painted a
panel in which he portrayed the said Messer Francesco with some of
his relatives. In this work is a S. Michael weighing souls, who is
admirable; and in him there is seen the knowledge of Luca, both in
the splendour of his armour and in the reflected lights, and, in
short, throughout the whole work. In his hands he placed a pair of
scales, in which are nude figures, very beautifully foreshortened,
one going up and the other down; and among other ingenious things
that are in this picture is a nude figure most skilfully transformed
into a devil, with a lizard licking the blood from a wound in its
body. Besides this, there is a Madonna with the Child on her lap,
with S. Stephen, S. Laurence, S. Catherine, and two angels, of whom
one is playing on a lute and the other on a rebec; and all these
figures are draped and adorned so beautifully that it is a marvel.
But the most miraculous part of this panel is the predella, which is
full of Friars of the said S. Catherine in the form of little
figures.
[Illustration: LUCA SIGNORELLI: PAN
(_Berlin: Kaiser Friedrich Museum, 79A. Canvas_)
In Perugia, also, he made many works; among others, a panel in the
Duomo for Messer Jacopo Vannucci of Cortona, Bishop of that city; in
which panel are Our Lady, S. Onofrio, S. Ercolano, S. John the
Baptist, and S. Stephen, with a most beautiful angel, who is tuning
a lute. At Volterra, over the altar of a Company in the Church of S.
Francesco, he painted in fresco the Circumcision of Our Lord, which
is considered beautiful to a marvel, although the Infant, having
been injured by damp, was restored by Sodoma and made much less
beautiful than before. And, in truth, it would be sometimes better
to leave works half spoilt, when they have been made by men of
excellence, rather than to have them retouched by inferior masters.
In S. Agostino in the same city he painted a panel in distemper, and
the predella of little figures, with stories of the Passion of
Christ; and this is held to be extraordinarily beautiful. At S.
Maria a Monte he painted a Dead Christ on a panel for the monks of
that place; and at Città di Castello a Nativity of Christ in S.
Francesco, with a S. Sebastian on another panel in S. Domenico. In
S. Margherita, a seat of the Frati del Zoccolo in his native city of
Cortona, he painted a Dead Christ, one of the rarest of his works;
and for the Company of the Gesù, in the same city, he executed three
panels, of which the one that is on the high-altar is marvellous,
showing Christ administering the Sacrament to the Apostles, and
Judas placing the Host into his wallet. In the Pieve, now called
the Vescovado, in the Chapel of the Sacrament, he painted some
life-size prophets in fresco; and round the tabernacle are some
angels who are opening out a canopy, with S. Jerome and S. Thomas
Aquinas at the sides. For the high-altar of the said church he
painted a panel with a most beautiful Assumption, and he designed
the pictures for the principal round window of the same church;
which pictures were afterwards executed by Stagio Sassoli of Arezzo.
In Castiglione Aretino he made a Dead Christ, with the Maries, over
the Chapel of the Sacrament; and in S. Francesco, at Lucignano, he
painted the folding-doors of a press, wherein there is a tree of
coral surmounted by a cross. At Siena, in the Chapel of S.
Cristofano in S. Agostino, he painted a panel with some saints, in
the midst of whom is a S. Cristopher in relief.
Having gone from Siena to Florence in order to see both the works of
those masters who were then living and those of many already dead,
he painted for Lorenzo de' Medici certain nude gods on a canvas, for
which he was much commended, and a picture of Our Lady with two
little prophets in terretta, which is now at Castello, a villa of
Duke Cosimo's. These works, both the one and the other, he presented
to the said Lorenzo, who would never be beaten by any man in
liberality and magnificence. He also painted a round picture of Our
Lady, which is in the Audience Chamber of the Captains of the Guelph
party--a very beautiful work. At Chiusuri in the district of Siena,
the principal seat of the Monks of Monte Oliveto, he painted eleven
scenes of the life and acts of S. Benedict on one side of the
cloister. And from Cortona he sent some of his works to
Montepulciano; to Foiano the panel which is on the high-altar of the
Pieve; and other works to other places in Valdichiana. In the
Madonna, the principal church of Orvieto, he finished with his own
hand the chapel that Fra Giovanni da Fiesole had formerly begun
there; in which chapel he painted all the scenes of the end of the
world with bizarre and fantastic invention--angels, demons, ruins,
earthquakes, fires, miracles of Antichrist, and many other similar
things besides, such as nudes, foreshortenings, and many beautiful
figures; imagining the terror that there shall be on that last and
awful day. By means of this he encouraged all those who have lived
after him, insomuch that since then they have found easy the
difficulties of that manner; wherefore I do not marvel that the
works of Luca were ever very highly extolled by Michelagnolo, nor
that in certain parts of his divine Judgment, which he made in the
chapel, he should have deigned to avail himself in some measure of
the inventions of Luca, as he did in the angels, the demons, the
division of the Heavens, and other things, in which Michelagnolo
himself imitated Luca's method, as all may see. In this work Luca
portrayed himself and many of his friends; Niccolò, Paolo, and
Vitelozzo Vitelli, Giovan Paolo and Orazio Baglioni, and others
whose names are not known. In the Sacristy of S. Maria at Loreto he
painted in fresco the four Evangelists, the four Doctors, and other
saints, all very beautiful; and for this work he was liberally
rewarded by Pope Sixtus.
It is said that a son of his, most beautiful in countenance and in
person, whom he loved dearly, was killed at Cortona; and that Luca,
heart-broken as he was, had him stripped naked, and with the
greatest firmness of soul, without lamenting or shedding a tear,
portrayed him, to the end that, whenever he might wish, he might be
able by means of the work of his own hands to see that which nature
had given him and adverse fortune had snatched away.
Being then summoned by the said Pope Sixtus to work in the chapel of
his Palace in competition with many other painters, he painted
therein two scenes, which are held the best among so many; one is
Moses declaring his testament to the Jewish people on having seen
the Promised Land, and the other is his death.
[Illustration: THE LAST JUDGMENT
(_Detail, after the fresco by =Luca Signorelli=. Orvieto: Duomo_)
_Anderson_]
Finally, having executed works for almost every Prince in Italy, and
being now old, he returned to Cortona, where, in those last years of
his life, he worked more for pleasure than for any other reason, as
one who, being used to labour, neither could nor would stay idle. In
this his old age, then, he painted a panel for the Nuns of S.
Margherita at Arezzo, and one for the Company of S. Girolamo, which
was paid for in part by Messer Niccolò Gamurrini, Doctor of Laws and
Auditor of the Ruota,[9] who is portrayed from life in that
panel, kneeling before the Madonna, to whom he is being presented by
a S. Nicholas who is in the same panel; there are also S. Donatus
and S. Stephen, and lower down a nude S. Jerome, and a David who is
singing to a psaltery; and also two prophets, who, as it appears
from the scrolls that they have in their hands, are speaking about
the Conception. This work 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, honourable, 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 for ever fixed in my mind. The said panel set in place, he
returned to Cortona, accompanied for a great part of the way by many
citizens, friends, and relatives, as was due to the excellence of
Luca, who always lived rather as a noble and a man of rank than as a
painter.
About the same time a palace had been built for Cardinal Silvio
Passerini of Cortona, half a mile beyond the city, by Benedetto
Caporali, a painter of Perugia, who, delighting in architecture, had
written a commentary on Vitruvius a short time before; and the said
Cardinal determined to have almost the whole of it painted.
Wherefore Benedetto, putting his hand to this with the aid of Maso
Papacello of Cortona (who was his disciple and had also learnt not a
little from Giulio Romano, as will be told), of Tommaso, and of
other disciples and lads, did not cease until he had painted it
almost all over in fresco. But the Cardinal wishing to have some
painting by the hand of Luca as well, he, old as he was, and
hindered by palsy, painted in fresco, on the altar-wall of the
chapel of that palace, the scene of S. John the Baptist baptizing
the Saviour; but he was not able to finish it completely, for while
still working at it he died, having reached the age of eighty-two.
Luca was a man of most excellent character, true and loving with his
friends, sweet and amiable in his dealings with every man, and,
above all, courteous to all who had need of him, and kindly in
teaching his disciples. He lived splendidly, and he took delight in
clothing himself well. And for these good qualities he was ever held
in the highest veneration both in his own country and abroad.
And so, with the end of this master's life, which was in 1521, we
will bring to an end the Second Part of these Lives; concluding with
Luca, as the man who, with his profound mastery of design,
particularly in nudes, and with his grace in invention and in the
composition of scenes, opened to the majority of craftsmen the way
to the final perfection of art, to which those men who followed were
afterwards enabled to add the crown, of whom we are henceforward to
speak.
FOOTNOTE:
[9] A judicial court, the members of which sat in rotation.
THE THIRD PART OF THE LIVES OF THE SCULPTORS, PAINTERS, AND
ARCHITECTS, WHO HAVE LIVED FROM CIMABUE TO OUR OWN DAY. WRITTEN
BY MESSER GIORGIO VASARI, PAINTER AND ARCHITECT OF AREZZO
PREFACE TO THE THIRD PART
Truly great was the advancement conferred on the arts of
architecture, painting, and sculpture by those excellent masters of
whom we have written hitherto, in the Second Part of these Lives,
for to the achievements of the early masters they added rule, order,
proportion, draughtsmanship, and manner; not, indeed, in complete
perfection, but with so near an approach to the truth that the
masters of the third age, of whom we are henceforward to speak, were
enabled, by means of their light, to aspire still higher and attain
to that supreme perfection which we see in the most highly prized
and most celebrated of our modern works. But to the end that the
nature of the improvement brought about by the aforesaid craftsmen
may be even more clearly understood, it will certainly not be out of
place to explain in a few words the five additions that I have
named, and to give a succinct account of the origin of that true
excellence which, having surpassed the age of the ancients, makes
the modern so glorious.
Rule, then, in architecture, was the process of taking measurements
from antiquities and studying the ground-plans of ancient edifices
for the construction of modern buildings. Order was the separating
of one style from another, so that each body should receive its
proper members, with no more interchanging between Doric, Ionic,
Corinthian, and Tuscan. Proportion was the universal law applying
both to architecture and to sculpture, that all bodies should be
made correct and true, with the members in proper harmony; and so,
also, in painting. Draughtsmanship was the imitation of the most
beautiful parts of nature in all figures, whether in sculpture or in
painting; and for this it is necessary to have a hand and a brain
able to reproduce with absolute accuracy and precision, on a level
surface--whether by drawing on paper, or on panel, or on some other
level surface--everything that the eye sees; and the same is true of
relief in sculpture. Manner then attained to the greatest beauty
from the practice which arose of constantly copying the most
beautiful objects, and joining together these most beautiful things,
hands, heads, bodies, and legs, so as to make a figure of the
greatest possible beauty. This practice was carried out in every
work for all figures, and for that reason it is called the beautiful
manner.
These things had not been done by Giotto or by the other early
craftsmen, although they had discovered the rudiments of all these
difficulties, and had touched them on the surface; as in their
drawing, which was sounder and more true to nature than it had been
before, and likewise in harmony of colouring and in the grouping of
figures in scenes, and in many other respects of which enough has
been said. Now although the masters of the second age improved our
arts greatly with regard to all the qualities mentioned above, yet
these were not made by them so perfect as to succeed in attaining to
complete perfection, for there was wanting in their rule a certain
freedom which, without being of the rule, might be directed by the
rule and might be able to exist without causing confusion or
spoiling the order; which order had need of an invention abundant in
every respect, and of a certain beauty maintained in every least
detail, so as to reveal all that order with more adornment. In
proportion there was wanting a certain correctness of judgment, by
means of which their figures, without having been measured, might
have, in due relation to their dimensions, a grace exceeding
measurement. In their drawing there was not the perfection of
finish, because, although they made an arm round and a leg straight,
the muscles in these were not revealed with that sweet and facile
grace which hovers midway between the seen and the unseen, as is the
case with the flesh of living figures; nay, they were crude and
excoriated, which made them displeasing to the eye and gave hardness
to the manner. This last was wanting in the delicacy that comes from
making all figures light and graceful, particularly those of women
and children, with the limbs true to nature, as in the case of men,
but veiled with a plumpness and fleshiness that should not be
awkward, as they are in nature, but refined by draughtsmanship and
judgment. They also lacked our abundance of beautiful costumes, our
great number and variety of bizarre fancies, loveliness of
colouring, wide knowledge of buildings, and distance and variety in
landscapes. And although many of them, such as Andrea Verrocchio and
Antonio del Pollaiuolo, and many others more modern, began to seek
to make their figures with more study, so as to reveal in them
better draughtsmanship, with a degree of imitation more correct and
truer to nature, nevertheless the whole was not yet there, even
though they had one very certain assurance--namely, that they were
advancing towards the good, and their figures were thus approved
according to the standard of the works of the ancients, as was seen
when Andrea Verrocchio restored in marble the legs and arms of the
Marsyas in the house of the Medici in Florence. But they lacked a
certain finish and finality of perfection in the feet, hands, hair,
and beards, although the limbs as a whole are in accordance with the
antique and have a certain correct harmony in the proportions. Now
if they had had that minuteness of finish which is the perfection
and bloom of art, they would also have had a resolute boldness in
their works; and from this there would have followed delicacy,
refinement, and supreme grace, which are the qualities produced by
the perfection of art in beautiful figures, whether in relief or in
painting; but these qualities they did not have, although they give
proof of diligent striving. That finish, and that certain something
that they lacked, they could not achieve so readily, seeing that
study, when it is used in that way to obtain finish, gives dryness
to the manner.
After them, indeed, their successors were enabled to attain to it
through seeing excavated out of the earth certain antiquities cited
by Pliny as amongst the most famous, such as the Laocoon, the
Hercules, the Great Torso of the Belvedere, and likewise the Venus,
the Cleopatra, the Apollo, and an endless number of others, which,
both with their sweetness and their severity, with their fleshy
roundness copied from the greatest beauties of nature, and with
certain attitudes which involve no distortion of the whole figure
but only a movement of certain parts, and are revealed with a most
perfect grace, brought about the disappearance of a certain dryness,
hardness, and sharpness of manner, which had been left to our art by
the excessive study of Piero della Francesca, Lazzaro Vasari, Alesso
Baldovinetti, Andrea dal Castagno, Pesello, Ercole Ferrarese,
Giovanni Bellini, Cosimo Rosselli, the Abbot of S. Clemente,
Domenico del Ghirlandajo, Sandro Botticelli, Andrea Mantegna,
Filippo, and Luca Signorelli. These masters sought with great
efforts to do the impossible in art by means of labour, particularly
in foreshortenings and in things unpleasant to the eye, which were
as painful to see as they were difficult for them to execute. And
although their works were for the most part well drawn and free from
errors, yet there was wanting a certain resolute spirit which was
never seen in them, and that sweet harmony of colouring which the
Bolognese Francia and Pietro Perugino first began to show in their
works; at the sight of which people ran like madmen to this new and
more lifelike beauty, for it seemed to them quite certain that
nothing better could ever be done. But their error was afterwards
clearly proved by the works of Leonardo da Vinci, who, giving a
beginning to that third manner which we propose to call the
modern--besides the force and boldness of his drawing, and the
extreme subtlety wherewith he counterfeited all the minutenesses of
nature exactly as they are--with good rule, better order, right
proportion, perfect drawing, and divine grace, abounding in
resources and having a most profound knowledge of art, may be truly
said to have endowed his figures with motion and breath.
There followed after him, although at some distance, Giorgione da
Castelfranco, who obtained a beautiful gradation of colour in his
pictures, and gave a sublime movement to his works by means of a
certain darkness of shadow, very well conceived; and not inferior to
him in giving force, relief, sweetness, and grace to his pictures,
with his colouring, was Fra Bartolommeo di San Marco. But more than
all did the most gracious Raffaello da Urbino, who, studying the
labours of the old masters and those of the modern, took the best
from them, and, having gathered it together, enriched the art of
painting with that complete perfection which was shown in ancient
times by the figures of Apelles and Zeuxis; nay, even more, if we
may make bold to say it, as might be proved if we could compare
their works with his. Wherefore nature was left vanquished by his
colours; and his invention was facile and peculiar to himself, as
may be perceived by all who see his painted stories, which are as
vivid as writings, for in them he showed us places and buildings
true to reality, and the features and costumes both of our own
people and of strangers, according to his pleasure; not to mention
his gift of imparting grace to the heads of young men, old men, and
women, reserving modesty for the modest, wantonness for the wanton,
and for children now mischief in their eyes, now playfulness in
their attitudes; and the folds of his draperies, also, are neither
too simple nor too intricate, but of such a kind that they appear
real.
In the same manner, but sweeter in colouring and not so bold, there
followed Andrea del Sarto, who may be called a rare painter, for his
works are free from errors. Nor is it possible to describe the
charming vivacity seen in the works of Antonio da Correggio, who
painted hair in detail, not in the precise manner used by the
masters before him, which was constrained, sharp, and dry, but soft
and feathery, with each single hair visible, such was his facility
in making them; and they seemed like gold and more beautiful than
real hair, which is surpassed by that which he painted.
The same did Francesco Mazzuoli of Parma, who excelled him in many
respects in grace, adornment, and beauty of manner, as may be seen
in many of his pictures, which smile on whoever beholds them; and
even as there is a perfect illusion of sight in the eyes, so there
is perceived the beating of the pulse, according as it best pleased
his brush. But whosoever shall consider the mural paintings of
Polidoro and Maturino, will see figures in attitudes that seem
beyond the bounds of possibility, and he will wonder with amazement
how it can be possible, not to describe with the tongue, which is
easy, but to express with the brush the tremendous conceptions which
they put into execution with such mastery and dexterity, in
representing the deeds of the Romans exactly as they were.