ands and feet is always perhaps his weakest point, yet even in his
early painting of the "Flagellation" he has already mastered some of
their greatest difficulties of foreshortening. The recognition of the
intention in a man's work enables one to dispense with much adverse
criticism in detail. It would be wearisome to reiterate the faults of
drawing in each picture when we come to deal with them separately, and
it is better to recognise in the outset that, in pursuit of a certain
definite end, Signorelli is careless of what seems to him unessential at
the moment.

Thus in dealing with him as a colourist[40] we have to bear in mind that
it was by line and modelling chiefly that his effects of movement were
obtained. To be over-critical of the shortcomings of his colour,
therefore, would be as foolish as to miss the charm of Bonifazio's
splendid harmonies in abuse of some defect of drawing. Sometimes, in
fact, Signorelli gains his end by the very crudeness and heaviness for
which he is generally condemned, the sharp contrasts giving a rugged
strength to his painting, and the copper colour of the flesh adding
robustness to the figures.

It would, however, be most unjust to speak as if his colour were always,
or even usually, crude and harsh. On the contrary, in landscape it is
invariably beautiful; and he uses certain golden and moss-greens in
foliage and grass, and a limpid greenish-blue in water, which are most
harmonious. Sometimes it is gorgeous, and in nearly all his early
paintings there is a beauty of red and soft green, and a warmth of
golden glow of great depth and tenderness. He had, perhaps, a tendency
to the use of too heavy colour, especially in the flesh; and he himself
seems aware of it, for, in middle life, for a brief time, he changed his
tone to an almost silvery lightness, with very pale flesh-tints, as in
the Uffizi "Holy Family," No. 1291, and again, after working at Orvieto,
in the "Dead Christ supported by Angels," of S. Niccolo, Cortona, whose
general colour is almost like honey; but he relapses always into his
characteristic dark tones, especially in the works of his old age, which
are for the most part heavy and rather harsh, with flesh-tints of the
reddish-brown of terra-cotta.

It is, as I have said, by form rather than colour that Signorelli
obtains his best effects. He is a superb linealist, as the often-quoted
"Flagellation" shows, and one is inclined to wish he had oftener used
outline, a