f the
"degeneration" of those who fell under his "crushing influence."[79]
Something of the sort has been said of Michelangelo, and might be said
of every strong man whose personality is powerful enough to stamp its
mark on his contemporaries, but since no one who is content to be merely
a copyist could produce valuable work, the world has probably lost
little by the submission. It is, however, true that, as the powerful
muscles of Michelangelo's statues become meaningless lumps in the works
of Bandinelli and Vasari, so the mannerisms of Signorelli, which were
the outward sign of his strong and energetic temperament, lost all
significance, and were merely coarse exaggerations in the work of his
imitators. The swaggering attitude, the freedom of gesture, and the
dramatic expression, shorn of the strength and earnest emotion from
which they sprang, became disagreeably incongruous in the pictures of
the feeble painters who imitated them.

But one, at least, of Signorelli's disciples was neither slavish nor
feeble. Bartolommeo della Gatta, otherwise Piero di Antonio Dei, the
most important of those who came under his influence, was a painter of
great charm and ability. If it be true, as a recent criticism has
pronounced, that the beautiful "Madonna," of the Christ Church
collection, Oxford, there attributed to Pier dei Franceschi, is from his
brush,[80] we have to deal with a man who started work under the same
ennobling influence as Signorelli himself. Be that as it may, and as
future research will decide, the fresco of "The Death of Moses," in the
Sistine Chapel, which later study has presumed to be almost entirely his
work, proves him to be a painter of great beauty and importance. Signor
Gaetano Milanesi has thrown doubt upon his existence as a painter of
anything except miniatures,[81] but the happy discovery of a document,
referring to his altar-piece of "S. Francis receiving the stigmata," in
the Church of that Saint in Castiglione Fiorentino, has placed the fact
beyond dispute.[82] The student who desires to know more of this painter
is referred to the last Italian edition of Cavalcaselle e Crowe, vol.
viii., and to the "Life" by Vasari, whose reliability in this case the
researches of the critics so well confirm. Born probably in 1408, he was
already a man of mature age when Signorelli himself was a child, but his
simple, pliable nature fitted him to be a follower rather than a leader,
and we find him now influence