Titian and Paolo
Veronese.

This point is so important for its bearing on Renaissance art that I may
be permitted to dilate at greater length on Signorelli's choice of types
and treatment of form in general. Having a special predilection for the
human body, he by no means confined himself to monotony in its
presentation. On the contrary, we can trace many distinct grades of
corporeal expression. First comes the abstract nude, illustrated by the
"Resurrection" and the arabesques at Orvieto[212]. Contemporary life, with
all its pomp of costume and insolence of ruffling youth, is depicted in
the "Fulminati" at Orvieto and in the "Soldiers of Totila" at Monte
Oliveto[213]. These transcripts from the courts of princes and camps of
condottieri are invaluable as portraits of the lawless young men who
filled Italy with the noise of their feuds and the violence of their
adventures. They illustrate Matarazzo's Perugian chronicle better than any
other Renaissance pictures; for in frescoes like those of Pinturicchio at
Siena the same qualities are softened to suit the painter's predetermined
harmony, whereas Signorelli rejoices in their pure untempered
character[214]. These, then, form a second stage. Third in degree we find
the type of highly idealised adolescence reserved by Signorelli for his
angels. All his science and his sympathy with real life are here
subordinated to poetic feeling. It is a mistake to say that these angels
are the young men of Umbria whom he loved to paint in their striped
jackets, with the addition of wings to their shoulders. The radiant beings
who tune their citherns on the clouds of Paradise, or scatter roses for
elect souls, could not live and breathe in the fiery atmosphere of
sensuous passions to which the Baglioni were habituated. A grave and
solemn sense of beauty animates these fair male beings, clothed in
voluminous drapery, with youthful faces and still earnest eyes. Their
melody, like that of Milton, is severe. Nor are Signorelli's angelic
beings of one uniform type like the angels of Fra Angelico. The athletic
cherubs of the "Resurrection," breathing their whole strength into the
trumpets that awake the dead; the mailed and winged warriors, keeping
guard above the pit of "Hell," that none may break their prison-bars among
the damned; the lute-players of "Paradise," with their almost feminine
sobriety of movement; the flame-breathing seraphs of the day of doom; the
"Gabriel" of Volterra, in who