Luca Signorelli

Cortonese, 1445/1450 - 1523

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Italian Renaissance painter (c.1450-1523)

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A young woman sitting and holding a nude baby boy is surrounded by winged angels and four men in this vertical painting. They all have pale skin, and the people, not angels, have delicate gold rings as halos. The woman, Mary, sits on a white stone pedestal on a stone step, which spans the width of the painting. Her head tilts to our right as she looks down. Her brown hair is covered with a translucent white veil. She wears a raspberry-pink dress under a midnight-blue cloak lined with pine green. She cradles the chubby baby with both hands. He has round cheeks, a snub nose, and bow-shaped lips. He looks at Mary and reaches toward her face with one hand. Two men stand on the step to either side of her pedestal, and two more kneel at the base of the step. The man at the top left is cleanshaven and has wings striped with grass green, mauve pink, pearl white, and sky blue. He wears a gold helmet, a muscled breastplate, a knee-length, lavender-blue tunic, and gold, shin-high, toe-less shoes. He holds a sword up high with one hand and a scale with the other. A tiny man kneels and prays to Mary in the higher pan of the scale. In front of him, a man with darker, tanned skin, kneels on one leg with his body facing us as he turns his head to look up at Mary and the baby. His brows are furrowed and his lips parted. He has short, curly brown hair and a trimmed beard. He wears a bottle-green robe and a canary-yellow cloak. He holds a piece of paper on a pink book braced against his raised knee. To the upper right, the man standing next to Mary’s pedestal has a long white beard, and he looks down at an open book he holds with both hands. He wears a conical, split hat, a grass-green robe edged with a pattern of haloed, winged baby heads against maroon red. He wears gold rings over white gloves and a white garment underneath the cloak. In front of him, a balding man with a curly white beard and hair also kneels on one leg in front of the step. This man also looks down with lips parted. He holds a book with a moss-green cover with one hand and a pen in the other as he writes on a piece of paper on the book. He wears a cranberry-red cloak over a lapis-blue robe, and both kneeling men wear sandals on the feet we can see. Four winged angels, about half the size of the other people, hover in a line behind Mary, two to each side. They all have long, blond, curly hair. Their wings and robes are painted in shades of red, yellow, blue, and green. The angel to our left holds a spray of white flowers and one to our right holds a branch of white lilies. They all look at Mary or the baby. A sliver of blue, mountainous landscape is visible to our left of the pedestal. The horizon comes about halfway up the composition, so Mary, the angels, and the men standing to each side of the pedestal are mostly outlined against a pale blue sky.
Luca Signorelli, Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels, mid or late 1510s, oil on panel transferred to hardboard, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.87

Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels

Luca Signorelli · mid or late 1510s · oil on panel transferred to hardboard ·  Accession ID  1961.9.87

In this horizontal painting, a crowd of more than two dozen men and women gathered shoulder to shoulder at the foot of three men hanging from wooden crosses nearly fill the scene. All the people have pale or ruddy skin. To our left of center, each of the crucified men is tied and nailed to a cross. Blood pours from their hands and feet, and from a gash over the central man’s right ribs. The men’s heads slump and their bodies sag. They are nude except for a red cloth across the central man’s hips and a small white loincloth on the man to our right. Two of the men wear crowns of thorns. The spear piercing the central man’s side is held by a man riding a white horse in the crowd below. At least three additional men in the crowd are on horseback. Many of the men are armed with spears, creating a bristle of vertical and diagonal lines over the group. The men and women wear robes and uniforms in shades of golden yellow, pine green, crimson and rust red, black, and cream white. A few men wear metal helmets, and one wears armor. Near the lower left corner, a woman wearing a navy-blue robe has fainted and is supported by two kneeling women while another woman and cleanshaven man look on, their fingers interlaced and held low. The smooth ground is grass green. A spindly tree with dark green leaves grows up the right side of the composition. Off in the distance beyond the tree, two buildings hint at a city. Blue clouds billow in the blue sky above.
Luca Signorelli, The Crucifixion, c. 1504/1505, tempera, oil, and gilding on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.75

The Crucifixion

Luca Signorelli · c. 1504/1505 · tempera, oil, and gilding on panel ·  Accession ID  1952.5.75

Luca Signorelli, Bust of a Youth Looking Upward [recto], c. 1500, black chalk partially indented with a stylus on tan laid paper, Woodner Collection, Gift in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, 1991.8.1.a

Bust of a Youth Looking Upward [recto]

Luca Signorelli · c. 1500 · black chalk partially indented with a stylus on tan laid paper ·  Accession ID  1991.8.1.a

Luca Signorelli, Two Nude Figures [verso], c. 1500, black chalk on tan laid paper, Woodner Collection, Gift in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, 1991.8.1.b

Two Nude Figures [verso]

Luca Signorelli · c. 1500 · black chalk on tan laid paper ·  Accession ID  1991.8.1.b

About twenty colorfully dressed people fill a long room behind an old man and young woman standing before a bishop in this horizontal painting. All the people have pale or ash-white skin, and their clothing is in shades of golden yellow, raspberry pink, pumpkin orange, teal, sea blue, or pea green. The men wear tunics and leggings or robes, and some have turbans or feathered hats. The women wear gowns and white or sheer head scarves. The man at the center of the composition, the bishop, wears a pearl-white robe and conical mitre hat. His white hair falls past his shoulders, and he has a long, curly beard. A balding, bearded man and young woman with honey-blond hair stand in front of him. Each has traces of gold halos around their heads. They face each other, and each reaches out one hand, which the bishop in turn holds. The groups of men to our left and women to our right look in all directions, though few look at the couple at the center. An older woman at the rightmost edge of the group stands out. Her gray-toned face is lined, and she wears a black robe. Her eyes are screwed shut, her mouth downturned, and she holds up one hand, palm out. One man in the group to our left plays a lute and others break sticks. More broken sticks are strewn on the ground around the men. The walls of the room are pale lavender or plum purple.
Luca Signorelli, The Marriage of the Virgin, c. 1490/1491, tempera on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.39

The Marriage of the Virgin

Luca Signorelli · c. 1490/1491 · tempera on panel ·  Accession ID  1961.9.39

Bibliography

1879

  • Vischer, Robert. Luca Signorelli und die italienische Renaissance. Leipzig, 1879.

1899

  • Cruttwell, Maud. Luca Signorelli. London, 1899.

1927

  • Dussler, Luitpold. Luca Signorelli. Des Meisters Gemälde. Stuttgart, 1927.

1953

  • Salmi, Mario. Luca Signorelli. Novara, 1953.

  • Mostra di Luca Signorelli. Exh. cat. Cortona and Florence. Florence, 1953.

1978

  • Kury, Gloria. The Early Work of Luca Signorelli: 1465-1490. Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1974. New York and London, 1978.

1989

  • Kanter, Laurence B. The Late Works of Luca Signorelli and His Followers, 1498-1559. Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1989. Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1990.

2002

  • Kanter, Laurence B., Guisi Testa, and Tom Henry. Luca Signorelli. Trans. Isabella Lodi-Fé Chapman. Milan, 2001.

2003

  • Boskovits, Miklós, and David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 2003: 636-637.