is extinguished;
And thou, Painting, make rivers of thine eyes
For without him thou remainest weak and obscure."

[31] Vasari, iii. 695.

CHAPTER II

DEVELOPMENT AND CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS GENIUS

The foregoing chapter contains only a bare record of certain facts in
the life of Luca Signorelli. Fortunately time has spared many of his
paintings, and in the study of these we get a fuller insight into his
nature and his aims. A man's work is, after all, the most satisfactory
and reliable document for those who take the pains to decipher it--the
autobiography which every man of genius bequeaths to posterity.

We have seen how by good fortune he was placed as a child to study
painting under Pier dei Franceschi, who was of all men most able to
bring out in his pupils the finer instincts and nobler qualities of
their genius. By his guidance and example, no doubt, Signorelli
cultivated his natural breadth of conception and of treatment, which
give grandeur and impressive solemnity to all his works, besides
acquiring the technical excellences of good drawing, solid modelling,
and the broad massing of the shadows, which are so characteristic of
Piero's own painting. The spirit of master and pupil was fundamentally
alike, the chief points of dissimilarity in their work arising from
minor divergences of temperament. Both were men of robust mind, with a
message of resolute purpose to deliver. Both chose to express themselves
through the medium of the human form in its most vigorous aspects, and
were, therefore, pre-occupied with mastering its structure. But while
Piero, with a serene nature, chose to represent unemotional figures like
the sculptures of the ancient Egyptians, the restless and impetuous
spirit of Signorelli preferred scenes of violent action, and energetic
movement.

It was, perhaps, the entire affinity of their temperament, as well as
his passion for anatomical study, which led him to choose his second
master in a man whose taste for realism, and interest in the action of
muscle and movement of limb was as keen as his own. On Antonio
Pollaiuolo, even more than on Pier dei Franceschi, had fallen the mantle
of Paolo Uccello's investigating spirit. As the latter gave all his
attention to applying the laws of perspective to landscape and figures,
so the efforts of Pollaiuolo were concentrated on giving freedom to the
limbs. Great anatomist though he was, Piero was not so ardent a lover of
the Nude