at careless. In the other two scenes, the composition is jerky and
insignificant, but the individual figures are characteristic, especially
the nude _ecorche_-like old saint. They represent visions which appear
in the air to S. Augustine, who sits below under a _loggia_.

Again, very close to the Arezzo altar-piece is "The Conception of the
Virgin," painted for the church of the Gesu, Cortona, now in the
Cathedral. The Virgin stands, on the usual cherub heads, in red and blue
robes, while God the Father bends over her, and two angels scatter
flowers through the air. Below are six prophets, among them David, with
his Psaltery, and Solomon, in crown and royal robe. Under the Virgin,
apparently supporting the cherubs, is the Tree of Life, with two very
fine nude figures of Adam and Eve receiving the fruit from the serpent.
It is the lower part only we have to consider, the whole of the upper
painting, with the weak, badly-draped Virgin and the theatrical angels
being certainly the work of assistants, as also, it seems to me, is the
drapery of the half-kneeling Prophet to the right. The David is exactly
the same figure as in the Arezzo altar-piece, to which, besides, there
is a great resemblance in all the faces, and in the hard coarse manner
in which the draperies are treated. The picture, however, lacks the
rugged strength which makes the Arezzo picture, with all its
shortcomings, so impressive, and only in the nude figures is the old
power unimpaired. These, however, are very good, the Adam especially
being as fine a study of the human form as any of the earlier work.

At Morra, a little village not far from Citta di Castello, in the church
of San Crescenziano, are two very important frescoes, a "Crucifixion"
and a "Flagellation," evidently very late work of the master. In the
latter the composition is very little altered from the early picture of
the Brera. Christ is in the centre, bound to the pillar, and on the
right stands the Roman soldier. The executioner near him is almost a
repetition of the magnificent drawing in the Louvre (see reproduction),
except that the legs are wide apart. All Signorelli's energies have
again gone into the figures of the executioners, but, fine as they are,
they are not treated with the same breadth as in the earlier picture,
albeit the painting is free almost to roughness. The background, instead
of the carved wall, now opens out of the court into a spacious
landscape.

In the "Crucifi