Directly we pass through the portal and enter the bare, ugly church, it is apparent that although its Tuscan architects and artists began their work lightheartedly enough, and although the Popes made offer of indulgences to all who assisted them, the sullen influence of the place weighed on their spirits. See how grey and gloomy is the nave behind its gay mask; see how Niccolò in spite of his love for the human form dwelt on the grim drama of the Fall of Man; see how the tragedy of life is blazoned forth by Signorelli. Only the Umbrians, the simple-hearted artists of the countryside, called in to paint the chancel with the story of the Virgin and the Life of Christ, and the Blessed Angelico, working on the vault of the Cappella Nuova, seem to have been untroubled.
But neither the frescoes of the Umbrians, among which we thought we could trace the hand of Pinturicchio, and certainly he was under commission to paint for the canons of Orvieto, when he was working in the Borgia Rooms in Rome, nor the exquisite reliquary which Ugolino Vieri of Siena wrought for the miraculous Corporal of Bolsena, detained us long. For in the southern transept we had glimpsed the Chapel of the Madonna di San Brizio, where Fra Angelico and Benozzo Gozzoli frescoed the vault, below which, many years later Luca Signorelli came to paint his great pictures of the Last Judgement.
It is a strange coincidence, as though some deep emotion had moved these Tuscans to expression, that in Orvieto we see not only the beginnings of realism in sculpture but the masterpiece of the first great painter of the Quattrocento, who gave life to the human form in fresco. Every one knows that Vasari claims for his kinsman, Luca of Cortona, the honour of having inspired the Last Judgement of Michelangelo. And no one can dispute that the Florentine, his greater genius less exercised by the study of anatomy, clothed his figures with more grace and dignity; and that the Dantesque terrors of his hell, with the boatman of the Styx silhouetted against the lurid glare of the underworld, are told with more reserve than Signorelli's. But whether the confusion and morbidity of the whole, already foreshadowing Baroque, surpasses the spacious compositions of Signorelli is largely a matter for the enthusiast for technique to declare.
ORVIETO: SANT'AGOSTINO.
It is interesting to note the discrepancy between the conditions under which these two men worked, each animated by the fire of genius, though one so far beyond the other, each rapt in contemplation of the awe-inspiring mystery of life and death. Michelangelo, with the denunciations of Savonarola fresh in his memory, worked alone and silently below the vault of the Sixtine, where he had lavished his splendid energy twenty-two years before; almost friendless, filled with gloomy imaginings. And looking on the Sixtine Judgement we feel something of the inarticulate anguish of his great spirit. But the frescoes of the Cappella della Madonna di San Brizio are the key to an unsuspected chamber in the soul of Luca Signorelli. For how reconcile these strange visions of the anti-Christ and of Life after Death with our knowledge of that courteous and stately gentleman 'who delighted in living splendidly, and loved to dress himself in beautiful garments.'
Only one other time does he give us a glimpse into this secret chamber, when we read the pathetic story of how he painted the bodily loveliness of his dead son before he yielded it, dry-eyed and silently, to the tyranny of the grave. Yet here perhaps we have the clue to the meaning of his frescoes in the Cathedral of Orvieto. For he had loved exceedingly, and seen his loved one lowered to the unresponsive earth. Do not we too know what it is, in spite of all our creeds and our philosophies, to weep for the gentle voice and the dear brave eyes and the comforting hand of those others whom we shall never meet again except in dreams? And it is not only the spirit that we cry for, but the body.
So, Signorelli. And we felt this, especially looking at the fresco of the Resurrection. For into the cold grey dawn of a featureless world rise men and women, struggling with the clay which seems to cling about their limbs, forcing them to make conscious efforts. Above them in the starry heavens two strong and splendid angels send forth the blast which calls them from the earth. The utter aloneness and the awful sense of space make the newly-risen dead shrink together, and some of them cling to each other, showing a pathetic human feeling of desolation in the midst of their wonderment and terror. Others are still engrossed in their struggle with the encumbering earth. But there are some who meet in this cold plain after long years of separation, and rush to hold each other. How Signorelli loved their splendid physical beauty! Even in his Paradise, where the heavenly choir makes music overhead, and the angels scatter celestial roses among the saints, he does not clothe them in gold raiment, only in their fair, strong limbs which were to him as beautiful as flowers.
It was not so long a step as it appeared from Signorelli's Visions of the Future Life to the Necropolis of Etruria, below the frowning walls of the city. For Orvieto is shadowed by the Wings of the Angel of Death—the genie of the ancient Etruscans, which we see faintly limned upon their sepulchres—and as the old custode at the Mancini Tombs told us with arms outspread towards the plain, 'c'è una vasta città dei morti, più grande che la città alta.'