lasters by the doorway, for example, are
composed, after the usual type of Italian _grotteschi_, in imitation of
antique candelabra, with numerous stages for the exhibition of the
artist's fancies. Unlike the work of Raphael in the Loggie, these
pilasters of Signorelli show no birds or beasts, no flowers or foliage,
fruits or fauns, no masks or sphinxes. They are crowded with naked
men--drinking, dancing, leaning forward, twisting themselves into strange
attitudes, and adapting their bodies to the several degrees of the
framework. The same may be said of the arabesques around the portraits of
the poets, where men, women, and children, some complete, some ending in
foliage or in fish-tails, are lavished with a wild and terrible profusion.
Hippogriffs and centaurs, sirens and dolphins, are here used as adjuncts
to humanity. Amid this fantastic labyrinth of twisted forms we find
medallions painted in _chiaroscuro_ with subjects taken chiefly from
Ovidian and Dantesque mythology. Here every attitude of men in combat and
in motion has been studied from the nude, and multitudes of figures draped
and undraped are compressed into the briefest compass. All but the human
form is sternly eliminated; and the body itself is treated with a mastery
and a boldness that prove Signorelli to have held its varied capabilities
firmly in his brain. He could not have worked out all those postures from
the living model. He played freely with his immense stores of knowledge;
but his play was the pastime of a Prometheus. Each pose, however
hazardous, carries conviction with it of sincerity and truth; the life and
liberty of nature reign throughout. From the whole maze of interlaced and
wrestling figures the terrible nature of the artist's genius shines forth.
They are almost all strong men in the prime or past the prime of life,
chosen for their salient display of vital structure. Signorelli was the
first, and, with the exception of Michael Angelo, the last painter thus to
use the body, without sentiment, without voluptuousness, without any
second intention whatsoever, as the supreme decorative principle. In his
absolute sincerity he made, as it were, a parade of hard and rugged types,
scorning to introduce an element of beauty, whether sensuous or ideal,
that should distract him from the study of the body in and for itself.
This distinguishes him in the arabesques at Orvieto alike from Mantegna
and Michael Angelo, from Correggio and Raphael, from