Every Day in Tuscany, page 17
I’VE LOOKED THROUGH reproductions of all of Luca’s paintings hoping to find an image of his hometown or local landscape. Here it is in the Etruscan Museum on Piazza Signorelli. Because Luca’s tondo, round painting, Virgin and Child with Saints Michael, Vincent of Saragozza, Margaret of Cortona, and Mark, arises directly from Cortona, it seems precious to us who live here. There’s the venerated local Santa Margherita in gray habit, and St. Mark, our patron saint, holding a still-recognizable model of the city. The tondo’s bottom third shows Mary’s feet resting on heads of putti and below them a scramble of snakes, devil, and lizard. Mary, quite objectively, looks down at the balance scale held by St. Michael, from which one tiny man tumbles toward the devil’s creatures. The other homunculus turns toward her. Judgment Day in Cortona!
Since wise people began collecting for this museum in 1727, quite a stash has accumulated. The Etruscan artifacts should be lingered over down in the old prison basement. Having benefited from a major intervention, the astonishing collection shines in the new cases and displays. In upper galleries, our Luca has several moments. His Adoration of the Shepherds is a disquieting painting. In the upper left, the Annunciation angel is on final approach. Baby Jesus lies in the foreground behind some peculiar silhouetted black plants. If you wander enough, you’ll come across wooden panels of putti with coat of arms and inscriptions. There must have been lots of such work around town when Luca was called on for every little festa and every rich man’s need to immortalize himself.
I LOVE UPPER Cortona’s secret terraces overlooking the broad Val di Chiana, the neighborhood shrines with faded paintings, fortress-like convents, and the old joined houses facing a neglected park. I often stop at San Niccolò, set back among cypresses. I ring for the caretaker, then feel privileged to enter this mysterious and private sanctuary. Front and center, Signorelli’s Lamentation of Saints Nicholas, Francis, Dominic, Michele, and Jerome over the Dead Christ lends a somber air to the charmed space. Christ, propped on top of his tomb, slumps to the side. An angel, who appears to support his weight, holds him up. He is truly dead at this moment. The resurrection, which they may believe will happen, has not yet happened. The stone tomb juts into the sight line of the viewer. In a conventional composition, it would be placed horizontally or vertically, but Signorelli’s decision to cant the stone gives the painting a jolt of tension.
To see the flip side of the Signorelli standard, the caretaker must press the button that reverses the painting. This is done with a great deal of seriousness. The reward, a sweetly colored Madonna and Child with Saints Peter and Paul. She looks melancholy; the Child is more adorable than Luca’s usual babes.
There’s also a fresco in San Niccolò that may or may not be Luca’s. My book says no. The man who opened the doors says yes, and he seems old enough to have known Signorelli. I vote yes, at least for partial authorship. Maybe it’s the lavender and saffron robes. Or the Baby Jesus leaning away from St. Christopher and holding the world in the shape of an orange. And the strong and delicate Sebastian. These just look like Luca’s hand.
Because it’s on my daily route, San Domenico is the church I visit most often. I light my votives at a side altar when I am worried for someone. The lofty ceiling and austere atmosphere calm me. I visit with Luca, too, his Virgin and Child with Saints Dominic and Blaise, Two Angels and Giovanni Sernini. The latter commissioned the painting and thereby earned his own spot. I always pause to look closely at the unidentified fragments of frescoes near the entrance, which could be in Fra Angelico’s hand, since he lived at the San Domenico monastery. But they have a della Francesca look to them. Luca, are you here?
Appropriately, Santa Maria del Calcinaio marks the end of the Cortona trail. Luca had a hand in hiring Francesco di Giorgio Martini, the architect for this monumental beauty that has anchored the view below the town walls since the church’s completion in 1513. Driving up from the valley, rounding the bend, suddenly the grand dome appears. I feel exhilarated, as though I’ve been given a big ciao, bella from the Renaissance. The name, St. Mary of the Lime Pit, comes from the area where shoemakers tanned their hides with local lime. The exact story of construction is lost but involved an ox who genuflected before an image of the Virgin in a niche. Miracles ensued, and the mighty church was built on the spot. The precious image is now on the altar. Here, Luca left us his Immaculate Conception with Six Prophets and Two Donors. Below God and the Virgin, six prophets hold open their books and scrolls, all inscribed with Latin scripture about the immaculate conception. I was glad I had my binoculars with me because the light is dim and the painting not in good condition. A pity.
This work is dated 1523–1524 in Luca Signorelli. Since Luca died in 1523, were the last touches put on by his nephew? I am shocked that the painting is not identified in the church. There is a lurid old postcard for sale that assigns it to “school of Signorelli.” Kanter and Henry’s book asserts that this was Signorelli’s last painting.
When I learned that, I had to give up believing the local lore about his death. From Vasari, everyone around Cortona knows the story of Luca dying two weeks after a fall while painting at Il Palazzone, the Passerini villa just up the hill. My friend Lyndall, widow of the last Passerini owner, lives in the tower. The family figures in Italian history since the twelfth century, so a Signorelli can be taken for granted in such a palazzo. She flicked on lights and we passed through several rooms painted by local Signorelli pupil Tommaso Bernabei (known as Il Papacello). His grotesque-style frescoes depict episodes from Roman history, including defeat at the hands of Hannibal at Lake Trasimeno. This fascinates especially because he gives us a Renaissance view of Cortona. Then we came to the dim little altar with the Signorellis, his Baptism of Christ and the Sibyl with Latin inscriptions. No one ever bothered to strip the side walls even though Faith, Hope, and Charity are said to wait below the whitewash. “He fell right here, toppled off the scaffolding,” Lyndall said as she pointed. And that was the closest I’d ever felt to his physical presence.
But the super-sleuths date his Palazzone work to 1522 and 1523, a year before the Calcinaio Immaculate Conception. Did he fall, maybe twist his ankle? Isn’t there usually a drop of truth in a legend? I’ll guess he limped back into town in early evening, probably had a jug of wine and played a few hands of briscola with neighbors in the piazza.
TO CONTINUE THE Signorelli Trail, allow two days for this loop. Cross the Val di Chiana to Foiano and Lucignano, recross the valley to Castiglion Fiorentino. Proceed to Arezzo, then to Sansepolcro, Città di Castello, Umbertide, and Perugia.
This is prime roaming land. Take the unpaved turns toward a bell tower, or a tiny town with one bar where you are sure to meet someone as indigenous as a summer wheatfield, or—great luck—you may find, as I did, a ruined rectory (cutlery still in a drawer) and collapsed church with fresco remnants and stones with iron rings you can lift to look down onto heaps of mildewed holy bones. The wreck may be for sale and you can sink in your life savings and years of your life. Such unexpected turns tempt fate.
Foiano, a market town in the fertile Val di Chiana, is known for bistecca, the enormous steaks from the really enormous white chianina, cows. The town should be better known for its piazzas, friendly citizens, the oldest carnevale festival in Italy, a trove of della Robbias, and, in the Chiesa della Collegiata, a great Signorelli. I don’t think he left anyone out of his Incoronazione della Vergine, con i santi Giuseppe, Maria Maddalena, Martino, Leonardo, Antonio da Padova, Benedetto, Girolamo, Giovanni Evangelista e Michele, quattro angeli e un committente; Coronation of the Virgin with Saints Joseph, Mary Magdalene, Martin, Leonard, Anthony of Padua, Benedict, Jerome, John the Baptist and Michael, Four Angels and a Donor. The saints, foregrounded and turned away from the celestial vision, kneel in prayer. San Martino looks resplendent in the embroidered mantle that he halved with a beggar, and he sits in high contrast to San Benedetto, who’s semi-nude with his rock of penance before him. These are memorable faces, the smallest of which, the donor, is supposed to be a self-portrait of Signorelli in old age. The cultural director of Foiano told me unequivocably that this is Signorelli’s last painting. Henry and Kanter disagree, placing it at March 1522 to June 1523. I wonder if, during that last period of his life, Luca might have been working on three paintings at once. Who knows where he brushed his last stroke.
Lucignano has one of the most enchanting town plans of any hill town, an elliptical form with concentric radiating streets. Because of the winding narrow passageways, it’s easy to imagine life there centuries ago. I am fond of the striped facade of San Francesco, with its ashen blue door. Inside, I like to visit Sant’Agatha who is holding her two breasts like cupcakes on a plate in one hand and the pincers that removed them in the other. Here also is a painting of death on horseback, riding hell-for-leather, full tilt, his white hair blown back, his bow drawn with the arrow aimed at an unsuspecting couple.
Next door in the Town Hall, a fabulous Luca awaits, San Francesco che riceve le stimmate, Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata. This painting fascinates me because of its lost context. Francis and a companion are kneeling while the angel—or Christ—flies down in exuberant coral robes. The color catches my eye because the lunette-shaped painting is said to have topped an armadio, armoire, that held the venerated Albero della Vita, Tree of Life, a striking six-foot-tall reliquary preserved in the next room. The tree branches are made of gilded copper, silver, and gold, and are adorned with coral, rock-crystal medallions, and miniatures. The tree is crowned by Christ on the cross, and just above is the curious figure of a pelican in a nest. A pelican? The bird, who pecks its own breast to feed its young, symbolizes selfless devotion to family.
Castiglion Fiorentino suffers from proximity to Cortona, which has such a plethora of art treasures. But Castiglion Fiorentino has solid virtues—an intact medieval village perched above the undulant Val di Chio, where groves produce optimal olive oil. Inside the walls, cart-wide streets lead to one of those balcony-of-the-world lookouts framed through an impressive loggia designed by Vasari. The untouristy town tastes of the “real” Tuscany. Fortunately, Luca stopped in around 1505, leaving at the Collegiata di San Giuliano a Lamentation Over the Dead Christ.
Could this body of Christ be modeled on his own dead son Antonio, who died of the plague in 1502? Vasari connected the drawing Luca made of his son to the Lamentation in Cortona, but according to Kanter, the Cortona painting was completed a few months before Antonio died. Perhaps Vasari confused it with a later work. Whatever the truth, Luca’s Christs often look like local boys. This one must have been at least inspired by Antonio’s body. It’s interesting, too, that the Virgin of the Misericordia here may be the only remaining painting by the unfortunate son, Antonio Signorelli.
Arezzo, capital of our province, sponsors a huge monthly antiques market. Vendors’ stands sprawl from the Vasari arcade, out into the Piazza Grande, and through many narrow streets. When I was given honorary citizenship in Arezzo, the mayor also bestowed on me the title “godmother of the fair.” He didn’t know how aptly he spoke. I’ve Christmas-shopped, birthday-shopped, and house-shopped there for all the years I’ve been in Italy. Almost my entire collection of religious art and artifacts comes from two dealers who pull out their ex votos when they see me. Finally restored, Piero della Francesca’s Legend of the True Cross cycle shines in San Francesco, but now we are pursuing Luca.
Vasari writes about a Cortona procession bringing on their shoulders a commissioned Signorelli painting all the way to Arezzo. At the age Vasari puts at eighty-one, Luca walked, too. He wanted to oversee the installation. Vasari was then a child just learning to write. He retained a vivid memory of Luca giving him a piece of jasper to wear to prevent nosebleeds and admonishing the father to allow young Giorgio to draw. In the Pinacoteca Comunale we can admire the Virgin and Child with Saints Donatus, Jerome, Nicholas of Bari, the Prophets David, Ezechiel, Isaiah, and Niccolò Gamurrini. A host of saints, music-playing angels, and prophets—and even God looking down on all. What music did Luca meditate on as he painted? Look, too, at Virgin and Child with Saints Francis, Clare, Margaret, Mary Magdalene, and Four Angels.
In Sansepolcro, you might be overwhelmed by Piero della Francesca and not take the ten-minute walk to the small church of San Antonio, where the Crucifixion with Saints by Piero’s pupil, our Luca Signorelli, hangs over the altar. As in many Renaissance paintings, time collapses on the canvas: In the background Christ is removed from the cross; in the foreground he is crucified and his mother has fainted into the lap of a woman whose red skirt cradles her—while reminding the viewer of blood. Luca slashes the sky behind the head of Christ with a long dark cloud paralleling the bar of the gibbet. Look closely. In one of the two puffy clouds you see the shape of a face. Since there’s nothing fanciful in the painting, this must represent God. The painting was a procession standard, two-sided, and the two saints who were once on the other side of the crucifixion are displayed as well.
At Città di Castello in the Pinacoteca Comunale, we find The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. The subject might have been chosen to stop the plague of 1497. Sebastian often was invoked as a protector against the Black Death. He survived the longbow and crossbow enthusiasts who riddled his body. (And if you survive, are you able to claim martyr status?) His heroic recovery may have given hope to those stricken with plague, but it was the association of the plague with the arrow that created his mystique. Throughout these horrific pandemics, the first sign of the disease was described as hitting like an arrow. I also found the death icon of the arrow in a history of the plague in the Ottoman Empire. I’ve also come across an anonymous medieval painting of a skeleton on horseback shooting arrows at plague victims.
Luca’s Sebastian is pilloried with several tormentors ranged below him. Two showcase Luca’s fascination with the male body—a man in striped leggings faces us and one shows his back to the viewer. His second-skin gold leggings make his shapely legs and taut buttocks the actual focal point of the painting. If Sebastian had any armed supporter, the archer’s rear would have made a prime target. Two other archers are dark-skinned and almost naked, aiming bows, while the well-dressed boys aim crossbows. The dark ones must have been slaves. The background street scene depicts medieval houses, classical buildings, and a glacial landscape based on—who knows—fantasy, or perhaps the Dolomites. From heaven, God looks down from a squashed yellow ovoid, while Sebastian casts his eye upward. Although only six arrows have hit him so far, he would be hard to miss from such proximity.
DOES THE FIRST work of Luca Signorelli remain here, a sacred fresco in the museum? No one knows if this bit of the Virgin’s face was painted by Signorelli. The artist almost certainly studied under Piero. In his early career, Luca worked in this Umbrian area for as long as a decade. On his paintings at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., Luca is identified as Umbrian, though his birthplace, Cortona, sits firmly in Tuscany.
There are other traditionally assigned works of Luca in Città. Because Luca’s early years are such a mystery, I like to think his hand created some of these.
The Virgin and Child with Saints Francis, Bonaventure, Louis of Toulouse, Anthony of Padua, Cecilia, Clare, Catherine, and Elisabeth of Hungary—what a crew—previously was omitted from Signorelli’s oeuvre, but Kanter affirms it as Luca’s. The painting is resplendent in Renaissance fabrics. I love the Virgin’s star-scattered dress and the fleur-de-lis cape over Clare’s poor dress. The infant Child holding out a crown turns toward St. Cecilia. The women’s hands are eloquent; there always must have been a language of gesture in Italy. The six accompanying panels of saints Kanter assigns to the nephew, Francesco Signorelli. Two of those, to me, give off the perfume of Signorelli.
At Umbertide, Luca’s Deposition from the Cross remains on the altar at Santa Croce, as he intended, bestowing its mellow golds, ochres, and browns on all who come to visit. In front of this painting, I always think of the smooth Italian word ambrato, ambered. The intimate details of this scene startle me. A holy woman holds out her hand to catch blood dripping from Jesus’s feet. Two robust men on ladders detach his arms from the cross as he slumps forward. The three predella scenes recall Piero della Francesca’s treatment of the Holy Cross themes in Arezzo’s San Francesco, but Luca’s realism shows how far he moved from the precepts of his former teacher.
Luca was paid around seventy florins for this fine work. How did he spend those gold coins? Vials of ground lapis lazuli for the blue of a Madonna’s dress, a stone roof for his studio, a brace of woodcocks for a feast, and lambskin slippers to wear in front of the fire?
The Perugia altarpiece in the city’s Museo Diocesano has great charm and impact. The Virgin reads a book while the Child holding a lily looks down at the pages. Below her, an angel strums a lute. He is seated on a dais with glasses of wild-flowers on either side of him. The four surrounding saints—John the Baptist looks quite wild—resemble cutouts pasted on the canvas. They would appear almost Byzantine if they were not so active and expressive. There’s another Signorelli Virgin and Child with a passel of saints in the Perugia’s Galleria Nazionale. This one is rare for being in its original frame with the predella scenes intact below.
Capital of Umbria, Perugia draws people from all over the world to its Università per Stranieri, a tough language school for those with the stamina for immersion. Ed’s course bumped his Italian to the next level, though the hour commute was agony. The museums house a comprehensive collection of Umbrian art. Perugia has great street life, a marvelous fountain, the duomo where the wedding ring of the Virgin resides, pastry and chocolate shops, and good-looking people. You could idle awhile, spend a few days (or a year) exploring Umbria, especially Assisi, Spello, Spoleto, and the ceramic centers, Deruta and Gualdo Tadino.
