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We have now considered in detail most of the important works of Signorelli's early manhood and maturity, and up to his seventy-fourth year have found him, both in conception and execution, still maintaining a high standard of excellence, and at an age when the life's work is supposed to be over showing but little sign of failing powers.
Scenes from Dante's "Purgatorio" and subjects from the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid are treated here in the same key; but the latter, since they engaged Signorelli's fancy upon Greek mythology, are the more important for our purpose. Two from the legend of "Orpheus" and two from that of "Proserpine" might be chosen as typical of the whole series.
As is so often the case in predella pictures, especially with Signorelli's, the spontaneity and freedom of execution, and even of conception, is much greater here than in the more carefully thought-out and finished works.
There is a very beautiful fragment of an unknown predella in the possession of Mr Jarvis of New Haven, U.S.A., which belongs approximately to this period. It has all the impressive dignity and breadth of treatment of Signorelli's best work.
Luca Signorelli's wild flowers in No. 74 seem to abide with me as vividly and graciously as anything; but they are but a detail and it is a very personal predilection. Perhaps the great exotic work painted far away in Belgium the Van der Goes triptych is the most memorable; but to choose an alien canvas is to break the rules of the game. Is it perhaps the unfinished Leonardo after all?
We may give one last instance. In Signorelli's Orvieto frescoes there is a figure of a young man, with aquiline features, long crisp hair and strongly developed throat, which reappears unmistakably in all the compositions, and in some of them twice and thrice in various positions.
The earlier frescoes of Fra Angelico, on the roof, depict Christ as Judge. But there is nothing in common with these works and Signorelli's. He bases it upon the Dantesque subjects illustrated, and quotes from the "Inferno": "Omero poeta sovrano; L' altro è Orazio satiro che viene, Ovidio è il terzo, e l' ultimo Lucano."
It is sufficient to compare with these the freer rendering of gesture, and the greater accuracy of the anatomy in Signorelli's executioners, to see what an advance he had already made upon any previous painting.
It represents the "Choir of Martyrs," a group of seven figures. In the centre are seated three Deacons in full canonicals, with Bishops on either side, and below two Saints in plain robes. These last have all Signorelli's characteristics of drawing, and sit with wide-spread knees and broadly-painted draperies, a striking contrast to the weak attitudes and niggling robes of the central group.
Their melody, like that of Milton, is severe. Nor are Signorelli's angelic beings of one uniform type like the angels of Fra Angelico.
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