as an accessory to be executed
because the Church has ordered it, and so he puts it in without thought
of all it meant and typified.

But although he sometimes falls short as an interpreter of the Church's
intention, the impressive grandeur of his work is in itself intensely
religious, and he makes us feel most solemnly the dignity of Nature, and
especially of the human form. Once he was stirred into something of the
Pagan spirit, probably under the influence of the court of Lorenzo, and
he touched the real note of Pantheism in the "Pan," of the Berlin
Gallery, and the noble figures in the background of the Uffizi and
Munich "Madonnas." In these the spiritual mood dominates and is
sustained throughout, and there is no sign of the scientific absorption
which sometimes in his treatment of the nude makes us too aware of the
student and the realist. One is at times conscious that, painting
straight from the life, Signorelli's interest lay chiefly in a faithful
reproduction of the body before him. His dead Christs for example, were
obviously copied exactly as the corpses lay or hung in his studio. The
S. Onofrio of the Perugia altar-piece, stood just so, a half-starved
street-beggar, with baggy skin over rheumatic joints. The angel in the
same picture, chosen perhaps for its grace of face, must be reproduced
exactly as the child sat, with weak legs and ungainly body. Each figure
is a truthful study from life, and it was that which interested the
painter, and not that he was representing saints and angels whose noble
beauty was supposed to elevate the mind to a state of worship.

Yet with all his realistic treatment, he was intensely alive to the
graces of decoration, both in general lines and in detail. In the
frescoes of Loreto, and more particularly of Orvieto, the mere scheme of
decoration is superb, and adds beauty and distinction to every subtle
line of the architecture. He pays attention, also, to the minor details
of decorative effect, and takes pains with the ornaments and
embroideries; while his use of gold, and embossing with gesso, add much
to the aesthetic charm of his work, and proves that he could, when
necessary, subordinate his love of realism to his sense of beauty.

Before summing up the chief qualities of Signorelli's work, I must not
omit one characteristic which points to the strength of his
personality--the way he repeats his own types (and not types only, but
precisely the same forms) time after tim