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Updated: June 12, 2025
Statesmen, arrogant pages, and warriors, stand behind the exposed shield-bearer. It is interesting to observe how Signorelli's attention has wandered from the empty faces and mechanically executed draperies of the monks, and concentrated itself on this group. The figures, in their tight clothes, are superbly posed and modelled, especially the three who stand next to the shield-bearer.
Of the two frescoes there, formerly attributed to him, it is now no longer doubted that one "The Journey of Moses and Zipporah" is by Pintorricchio, and the opinion is gradually gaining ground that the other "The Death of Moses" although much nearer to Signorelli's style, is not sufficiently so as to permit us to accept it as his work.
It is not till later, however, that the most important advance he made on previous painting first begins to show itself the power, namely, of rendering combined action, of working the limbs of a crowd into a single movement. This is Signorelli's special achievement, on the merits of which he takes rank with the most important masters of the Quattrocento as a pioneer and teacher.
The whole is done with so much grace, such simplicity of composition, and transparency of style, corresponding to the naïf and superficial legend, that we feel a perfect harmony between the artist's mind and the motives he was made to handle. In this respect Bazzi's portion of the legend of S. Benedict is more successful than Signorelli's.
Signorelli has indeed hardly altered the childish chubby features of the Deacon in the middle, nor the benevolent vacuity of the two Bishops, so different to his own austere types. Opposite to this, over the portal, is a group of eight "Virgins," broadly and vigorously treated, in Signorelli's boldest manner.
Then there are the people, dark, bushy-bearded men, riding about like brigands, wrapped in green-lined cloaks upon their shaggy pack-mules; or loitering about, great, brawny, low-headed youngsters, like the parti-colored bravos in Signorelli's frescoes; the beautiful boys, like so many young Raphaels, with eyes like the eyes of bullocks, and the huge women, Madonnas or St.
Signorelli's character, from all we know of it, seems to have been most upright and generous. "Such was the goodness of his nature, that he never lent himself to things that were not just and righteous," says Vasari, and that he should have been guilty of so petty a crime towards a friend, is not for a moment to be believed.
Now a man of nearly seventy, Signorelli's energies seemed to grow greater with increasing age, for in 1508 we find him, besides being elected to his usual offices, deputed as ambassador to Florence, to demand there permission to reform the offices and ordinances of Cortona, and in the same year he was at Rome, together with Perugino, Pintorricchio, and Sodoma, working at the decoration of the Vatican Chambers, already begun by Pier dei Franceschi.
The two large Saints on the reverse of the Standard are, on the other hand, imposing and noble figures, splendidly painted in Signorelli's grandest and most sweeping manner.
Specially in "The Death of Virginia," of the Morelli Collection, Bergamo, and the sketched figures in the repainted "Adoration of the Magi," lately exposed in the Uffizi. "Purgatorio," ii. 38. For example, in the "Madonna," of the Mancini Collection, and "The Crowning of the Elect," at Orvieto. Signorelli's pictures, when not frescoed, are invariably painted with oil. "Italian Painters," i. 92.
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