around 1450 -1523 · Cortona, Umbria, Rome, Orvieto and Tuscany

Powerful anatomy, clear perspective and apocalyptic imagination make Luca Signorelli one of Michelangelo's great precursors.

Luca Signorelli was born in Cortona around 1450. Probably trained with Piero della Francesca, he learned to construct space through perspective and light. From the 1470s, he worked in several cities in central Italy. His career took him to Arezzo, Florence, Perugia, Loreto, Rome, Siena and Orvieto. At the Sistine Chapel, he participated in the cycle devoted to Moses before certain parts disappeared. His genius is especially affirmed in the representation of the human body. Nudes, soldiers, apostles and sacred figures are captured in complex twists, with musculature that directly serves the story. The frescoes of the Last Judgment in the San Brizio Chapel orvieto Cathedral, painted around 1499 -1504, constitutes his masterpiece: resurrection of the dead, damned, demons and elect occupy space in a vision of exceptional audacity. The Allegory of Fertility and Abundance shows his taste for Antiquity, while Coriolanus, persuaded by his family to spare Rome, combines civic history, eloquence of gestures and palatial decor. In the Annunciation or Communion of the Apostles, the bright color and architecture reinforce spiritual gravity. At the head of a workshop active since the 1490s, Signorelli responds to numerous commissions until his death in 1523. His art opened the way to the great anatomical inventions of the Renaissance accomplished. The "Luca Signorelli" selection notably compares Allegory of Fertility and Abundance and Annunciation. His reading favors figures.

In Signorelli, the body thinks and tells: each muscular tension becomes a moral, spiritual or dramatic gesture.