o last paintings we get a hint of the great work that was to
come three years later--at Orvieto. Signorelli has put forth all his
strength in these groups of swaggering youths in every posture of
conscious power and pride, and never perhaps been more successful in
individual figures. Some of the faces in the last fresco appear to be
portraits, and if it be true, as Vasari says, that he painted the
Vitelli and Baglioni, it is here probably that we should find them
rather than among the audience of Antichrist.

In running the eye down the whole series of frescoes, the scheme of
colour, as far as can be judged in their present condition, does not
strike one as pleasant. Crude blues, emerald greens, brownish purples,
heavy earthen browns--these are the predominating tints. The flesh tones
are uniformly red and heavy. Neither is the decorative effect of the
compositions specially good, as at Loreto, and more particularly at
Orvieto. Perhaps even, on a superficial view, the space-filling by
Sodoma is happier, and has a more imposing effect. It is chiefly in
detail that the great qualities of Signorelli show themselves.

The rest of the walls of the large cloister are painted with
twenty-seven subjects by Sodoma, showing the youth and hermit-life of
the saint, and continuing, after the series by Signorelli, with his
miracles and his old age. Although the subjects chosen by Luca
illustrate the later years, yet they were painted first, and it is
probable that the place of each scene was arranged before any of the
work was entered upon.

The year following the execution of these frescoes Signorelli was in
Siena, painting the two wings for the altar-piece of the Bicchi family,
formerly in the church of S. Agostino, now in the Berlin Gallery, No.
79. A MS. of the Abbate Galgano Bicchi, which gives the date, speaks of
it as an _Ancona_, the centre of which was a statue of S. Christopher by
Jacopo della Quercia, and with a _predella_, which the Abbate minutely
describes.[57] Nothing now remains of the altar-piece but these two
beautiful wings, one of which contains figures of the Magdalen, Santa
Chiara, and S. Jerome, the other, of S. Augustine, S. Antonio and S.
Catherine of Siena. Vasari writes of it: "At Siena he painted in
Sant'Agostino, a picture for the chapel of S. Cristofano, in which are
some Saints surrounding a S. Christopher in relief."[58]

Both panels are of very rich and harmonious colour, especially the one
contai