Signorelli, LUCA, Italian painter, was born about 1441, at Cortona, being a distant relative of Vasari, the historian of Italian art. He studied under Piero della Francesca of the Umbrian school, but seems to have learned most from observation of the human form. During the first half of his life he had apparently no settled home; at all events he worked in various towns in Italy. At Loreto he painted a number of frescoes of sacred subjects, commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV.; in the Sistine Chapel the fresco called the Acts of Moses; and for Lorenzo de' Medici the picture known as the School of Pau. This last design he subsequently repeated on the wall of Pandolfo Petrucci's palace at Siena; in a convent of that same city he painted, after 1497, eight frescoes illustrating the Life of St Benedict. But the greatest achievement associated with his name is a number of frescoes, depicting such subjects as the Fall of Antichrist, Punishment of the Wicked, the Last Days of Earth, done on the walls of a chapel of the cathedral in Orvieto. The boldness and grandeur of invention shown in these designs, and the powerful modelling of the nude forms, suggest comparisons with Michelangelo. Signorelli was one of the painters summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II. in 1508 to adorn the Vatican, and along with his colleagues was dismissed to make way for Raphael. In his native town he left many proofs of his artistic skill, and died there in 1525.
See Crowe and Cavalcaselle's History of Painting in Italy (1864-71), Sidney Colvin in the Cornhill for 1875, and R. Vischer's Luca Signorelli (Leip. 1879).