corpse. This figure is conceived and
executed in a style worthy of the Orvietan frescoes.
Signorelli, for whose imagination angels had a special
charm, has shown here that his too frequent contempt for
grace was not the result of insensibility to beauty.
Strength is the parent of sweetness in this wonderful
winged youth. But not a single sacrifice is made in the
whole picture to mere elegance.--Cortona is a place which,
independently of Signorelli, well deserves a visit. Like
all Etruscan towns, it is perched on the top of a high
hill, whence it commands a wonderful stretch of
landscape--Monte Amiata and Montepulciano to the south,
Chiusi with its lake, the lake of Thrasymene, and the
whole broad Tuscan plain. The city itself is built on a
projecting buttress of the mountain, to which it clings so
closely that, in climbing to the terrace of S. Margarita,
you lose sight of all but a few towers and house-roofs.
One can almost fancy that Signorelli gained his broad and
austere style from the habitual contemplation of a view so
severe in outline, and so vacant in its width. This
landscape has none of the variety which distinguishes the
prospect from Perugia, none of the suavity of Siena. It is
truly sympathetic in its bare simplicity to the style of
the great painter of Cortona. Try to see it on a winter
morning, when the mists are lying white and low and thin
upon the plain, when distant hills rise islanded into the
air, and the outlines of lakes are just discernible
through fleecy haze.--Next to Cortona in importance is the
Convent of Monte Oliveto in the neighbourhood of Siena,
where Signorelli painted eight frescoes from the story of
S. Benedict, distinguished by his customary vigour of
conception, masculine force of design, and martial
splendour in athletic disdainful young men. One scene in
this series, representing the interior of a country inn,
is specially interesting for a realism not usual in the
work of Signorelli. The frescoes painted for Petruccio at
Siena, one of which is now in the National Gallery, the
fresco in the Sistine Chapel, which has suffered sadly
from retouching, and the magnificent classical picture
called the 'School of Pan,' executed for Lorenzo de'
Medici, and now at Berlin, must not be forgotten, nor yet
the church-pictures sca