1128. THE CIRCUMCISION OF CHRIST.
Luca Signorelli (Cortona: 1441-1523).
Signorelli was born at Cortona, on the boundary of Umbria and Tuscany. By early teaching he is an Umbrian, but in style a Florentine. Indeed, his position in the history of art is that of forerunner of Michael Angelo. He was a pupil of Piero della Francesca, with whom, no doubt, he acquired a knowledge of the figure from anatomical study of the nude. His chief works, the frescoes in the cathedral of Orvieto,[219]—executed by the artist after his sixtieth year,—were ten years earlier than the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by Michael Angelo, who was largely influenced by Signorelli's example. Like Michael Angelo, Signorelli is intensely dramatic, and in pictures which do not allow of the violent action to be found in his frescoes, his figures seem to be instinct with suppressed action. "To no other contemporary painter," says Morelli, "was it given to endow the human frame with the like degree of passion, vehemence, and strength" (Roman Galleries, p. 92). "To this we may add," says another critic, "that no other painter has ever conceived humanity with the same stately grandeur and in the same broad spirit. The confident strength of youth, the stern austerity of middle life, the resolute solemnity of old age—these are his themes. Signorelli is, before all, the painter of the dignity of human life" (Maud Cruttwell, Luca Signorelli, p. 31.) He is a representative also of the literary and classical Renaissance. He is fond of architectural adornments in the style of his time—as in the present picture, where the ceremony takes place in a hall or porch enriched with bas-reliefs in circular panels and paved with square slabs of coloured marbles. He painted the usual religious pictures, but did not adhere to the traditional modes, and often introduced a classical element (see 1133). It is interesting to note that in his picture of some nude Greek gods (at Berlin) the composition is the same as in his regulation church pictures of the Madonna and Saints. Of Signorelli's personal life there is a pleasant account in Vasari, whose kinsman he was. He was a person of consequence in his native city, going hither and thither to paint commissions, and then returning to the discharge of his civic duties. "He lived splendidly, in the manner," says Vasari, "rather of a noble and a gentleman than in that of a painter." Not that he despised his profession, for he expressly advised that his little kinsman should "by all means learn to draw, that he may not degenerate, for even though he should hereafter devote himself to learning, yet the knowledge of design, if not profitable, cannot fail to be honourable and advantageous." Of Signorelli's own devotion to his art Vasari tells another story, which has thus been versified—
Vasari tells that Luca Signorelli,
The morning star of Michael Angelo,
Had but one son, a youth of seventeen summers,
Who died....
Still Luca spoke and groaned not; but he raised
The wonderful dead youth, and smoothed his hair,
Washed his red wounds, and laid him on a bed....
Naked and beautiful....
Then Luca seized his palette: hour by hour
Silence was in the room; none durst approach:
Morn wore to noon, and noon to eve, when shyly
A little maid peeped in and saw the painter
Painting his dead son with unerring hand-stroke,
Firm and dry-eyed before the lordly canvas.Symonds, Renaissance, iii. 281.
Our picture is thus described by Vasari,—for the fact that he calls it a fresco is no argument against the identification, since he often makes such mistakes: "In the church of San Francesco, in Volterra, this master painted a fresco, representing the Circumcision of Christ. This also is considered a wonderfully beautiful picture, but the Child having been injured by the damp, was repaired by Sodoma, whereby the beauty was much diminished. And, of a truth, it would often be much better to retain the works of excellent masters, though half-spoiled, than suffer them to be retouched by less capable artists." Vasari, however, seems to have been "anxious to place Sodoma in a bad light whenever he could. Damp was in all probability not the cause of the restoration of the infant Christ. It was very likely repainted because the public of Volterra disliked the realism with which Signorelli seems to have treated the subject" (Richter, p. 48). Signorelli's children are curiously ugly: it seems as if he had no sympathy except in the painting of figures of powerful maturity. Of the fact of the repainting recorded by Vasari there is no doubt; for the position of the legs has been altered, their original action being distinctly shown by the incised outline still visible through the deep blue colour of the Virgin's robe. The painting of the other figures is "bold and resolute, the draperies sweep in broad folds round them. The attitude of the standing woman to the right is grand, and the earnest concentration of the faces on the ceremony, and the absence of any connecting link between them and us, give dramatic reality to the scene" (Cruttwell, p. 40). It is interesting to note that the figure of the operator is like the portrait of himself which Signorelli introduced into his frescoes of the Preaching of Anti-Christ at Orvieto: the figure is, moreover, clothed in the dress of the period and of the rich materials in which, Vasari says, the artist took much pleasure in dressing himself. Behind the central group is the aged Simeon, who blessed God and said, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word."