ulpture.

Unlike Botticelli, he is consistently a lover of energy all through his
life, and as the source of energy, of strength, and vigorous health. His
grand conception of the body is one of the chief characteristics of his
work. Strong and stately, it is a fit receptacle for the spirit of
resolution and self-confidence with which he animates it. His Virgins
are like goddesses, and seem to typify for him the strength of
womanhood. Nowhere do we see nobler beauty than in his angels and
archangels. In these "divine birds"[38] he seems to have recognised the
ideal of all he strove for, and their wings are symbols to him of swift
movement and superhuman strength. It was always strength that attracted
him, and strength conscious of its own force, finding its expression in
exuberant animation. Thus he loves to paint the swaggering soldiers,
whose attitudes express their audacious self-reliance. He gives the
luxuriant life of Nature as no one else gave it, and his trees and
plants are as robust and unyielding as his firmly-planted figures. His
angels' wings are not merely decorative, but have real power of muscle
under the plumes to lift the body and bear it aloft without fatigue.

He was a lover of beauty, but it was not for beauty he strove, or we
should not so often find bits of realistic ugliness to risk the harmony
of his noblest paintings. Grace and charm seemed to come to him
unsought, as natural adjuncts of a vigorous and healthy nature; but his
deliberate choice of types of face and form, were those which, by their
strength, promised satisfaction to his love of energetic action. From
the first this tendency is noticeable, for example, in the
above-mentioned "Flagellation," and the Loreto "Conversion of Saul," and
goes on increasing until it reaches a climax in the frescoes of Orvieto.

Once one has grasped the main motive of Signorelli's work, his
preoccupation with movement, and consequently with the muscles, his
frequent defects and inequalities in other respects become, as faults of
inattention, less incomprehensible. For example, his values of distance
are often faulty, and give the unpleasant sensation that one figure is
standing on the top of another,[39] a defect of carelessness, for no one
is a better master of aerial perspective when he chooses. Again, his
hands and feet are often incorrectly drawn and badly modelled, but it is
only when they are not essential to the action; for although the drawing
of h