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拍品专文
Luca Signorelli was one of the giants of late fifteenth-century painting in Tuscany. Born in Cortona, he continued to be based there, but won major commissions in Perugia, Città di Castello, Orvieto and Siena. The young Raphael was influenced by him and Michelangelo knew his frescoes at Orvieto. A forceful draftsman, he was a narrator of genius, as this panel demonstrates.
First published when it was sold in 1988, this panel was correctly recognised by Laurence Kanter as the central element of a predella, flanked by a Marriage of the Virgin, with the Annunciation (private collection), and a Christ among the Doctors, with the Flight into Egypt (Kansas City, Nelson Atkins Museum, Kress Collection). Kantor persuasively proposed that the three panels, which bear identical inscriptions on the versi, were from the predella of the most prominent of the painter’s later undertakings at Cortona, the Assumption of the Virgin for the high altar of the Cathedral, S. Maria Assunta, for which he was contracted on 12 March 1519 and was paid in September 1521. The main panel now in the Museo Diocesano at Cortona, partly because of its subject, lacks the vibrancy of the predella scenes, which were originally flanked by two narrower panels of saints, one of which, a Saint Sebastian, has been identified by Tom Henry. When he painted these, Signorelli was already about seventy and thus old by the standards of his time. In the main panel, he drew on the assistance of his nephew Francesco, but the predelle he evidently chose to execute himself; as Bernard Berenson - who didn’t know this panel - noted in 1897, referring to the panels of 1516 at Umbertide: ‘Luca’s triumphs in movement … are to be found chiefly in his predelle, executed in his hoary old age, where, with a freedom of touch at times suggesting Daumier, he gives masses in movement, conjoined, and rippling like chain mail’ (The Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance, New York and London, 1897, p. 82). These qualities are incontestably found in this dramatic treatment of the Massacre of the Innocents, the composition of which in its interwoven complexity recalls that of the most arresting of Signorelli’s frescoes at Orvieto, the Punishment of the Damned. As Tom Henry points out, the colours used by the artist in all three narratives echo those of the main panel; he fairly comments that the Massacre ‘was clearly executed at great speed and with a daring non-finito, suggestive of an artist … more interested in design solutions and overall effect than in uniform finish’. It is only necessary to compare the composition with that of Matteo di Giovanni’s altarpiece of the subject of 1482 in the church of Sant’ Agostino at Siena, for which Signorelli supplied his now dismembered Bicchi altarpiece, to see how startlingly original his interpretation of the subject was.
When the predella panels were separated from the altarpiece has not been established, but these were evidently transferred to the small church of S. Niccolò at Cortona. From there they passed, by 8 February 1819, to Conte Baldelli (presumably Giovanni Battista Baldelli Boni (1766-1831)), of a prominent Cortonese family.
The loan of this, as of the companion panels, has been requested for the exhibition planned to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Signorelli’s death in 2023 at Cortona.
First published when it was sold in 1988, this panel was correctly recognised by Laurence Kanter as the central element of a predella, flanked by a Marriage of the Virgin, with the Annunciation (private collection), and a Christ among the Doctors, with the Flight into Egypt (Kansas City, Nelson Atkins Museum, Kress Collection). Kantor persuasively proposed that the three panels, which bear identical inscriptions on the versi, were from the predella of the most prominent of the painter’s later undertakings at Cortona, the Assumption of the Virgin for the high altar of the Cathedral, S. Maria Assunta, for which he was contracted on 12 March 1519 and was paid in September 1521. The main panel now in the Museo Diocesano at Cortona, partly because of its subject, lacks the vibrancy of the predella scenes, which were originally flanked by two narrower panels of saints, one of which, a Saint Sebastian, has been identified by Tom Henry. When he painted these, Signorelli was already about seventy and thus old by the standards of his time. In the main panel, he drew on the assistance of his nephew Francesco, but the predelle he evidently chose to execute himself; as Bernard Berenson - who didn’t know this panel - noted in 1897, referring to the panels of 1516 at Umbertide: ‘Luca’s triumphs in movement … are to be found chiefly in his predelle, executed in his hoary old age, where, with a freedom of touch at times suggesting Daumier, he gives masses in movement, conjoined, and rippling like chain mail’ (The Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance, New York and London, 1897, p. 82). These qualities are incontestably found in this dramatic treatment of the Massacre of the Innocents, the composition of which in its interwoven complexity recalls that of the most arresting of Signorelli’s frescoes at Orvieto, the Punishment of the Damned. As Tom Henry points out, the colours used by the artist in all three narratives echo those of the main panel; he fairly comments that the Massacre ‘was clearly executed at great speed and with a daring non-finito, suggestive of an artist … more interested in design solutions and overall effect than in uniform finish’. It is only necessary to compare the composition with that of Matteo di Giovanni’s altarpiece of the subject of 1482 in the church of Sant’ Agostino at Siena, for which Signorelli supplied his now dismembered Bicchi altarpiece, to see how startlingly original his interpretation of the subject was.
When the predella panels were separated from the altarpiece has not been established, but these were evidently transferred to the small church of S. Niccolò at Cortona. From there they passed, by 8 February 1819, to Conte Baldelli (presumably Giovanni Battista Baldelli Boni (1766-1831)), of a prominent Cortonese family.
The loan of this, as of the companion panels, has been requested for the exhibition planned to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Signorelli’s death in 2023 at Cortona.