|
| 2. MATTEA DI | BERNARDINA.
| DOMENICO DI |
| | SIMONE. |
+-------------+ | +-+-----------+
| | | | |
LUCREZIA FRANCESCO ROSATA = GIULIO. FILIZIANO.
= DOMENICO (Painter). MARIOTTO
DI GILIO = FELICE DI FELICE
(Banker.) CARRARI. PASSERINI.

LUCA SIGNORELLI

CHAPTER I

HIS LIFE

(BORN 1441: DIED 1523)

It is a curious fact that, considering the number of documents which
exist relating to Signorelli, and the paintings time has spared, so
little should be known beyond the merest outline of his life. The very
dates of his birth and death are indirectly acquired; the documents
leave his youth and early manhood an absolute blank, and there are only
two of his numerous works which can with certainty be placed before his
thirty-third year.[1] We are, therefore, forced to fall back upon
traditionary record, and by the aid of his biographer Vasari, and the
evidence of youthful studies which his paintings contain, to patch
together a probable account of his life, up to the time when the
documents begin. On Vasari, in this case, we can depend with a certain
amount of confidence, since Signorelli was his kinsman, and they had
been in such personal communication as was possible between an old man
and a child.

From Vasari, then, we learn that Luca was born in Cortona, of Egidio
Signorelli, and a sister of Lazzaro de Taldi.[2] This Lazzaro, great
grandfather of the biographer, deserves special mention, since it was
through his means, and under his guardianship, that Luca was placed as a
child to study painting with Pier dei Franceschi, at Arezzo.[3] Vasari
tells us that Lazzaro was "a famous painter of his time, not only in his
own country, but throughout Tuscany, with a style of painting hardly to
be distinguished from that of his great friend, Pietro della
Francesca."[4] This, however, is an assertion that has never been
supported, and was probably based on the author's pride in his own
family, for in the Cortona tax-receipts for the year 1427, he is
described merely as a harness-maker (_Sellajo di Cavalli_.)[5] There is,
besides, no record of him among the painters of Arezzo, and no fragment
remains of the many works enumerated by his great-grandson. But it is of
little