Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/358

350 he painted a picture, also in tempera, of the Dead Christ, and at Città di Gastello, a Nativity of the Saviour, for San Francesco, with another in San Domenico, the subject of which is San Sebastiano. At Cortona, his native city, this master painted a Dead Christ, in the church of Santa Margherita, which belongs to the Barefooted Friars; it is accounted one of his best works. In the same city he painted three pictures for the Society of Jesus; of these that which is placed at the high altar is most admirable; the subject is the Saviour, who administers the sacrament to the apostles, when Judas places the host in the money-bag. In the Capitular Church, which is now called the Episcopate, our artist painted certain Prophets of the natural size, in fresco, for the chapel of the Sacrament: around the tabernacle, moreover, are numerous Angels erecting a pavilion, and on each side are figures, one of St. Jerome, the other of St. Thomas Aquinas. For the high altar of the same church he painted a most beautiful Assumption on panel, and the designs for the pictures in the principal window of the church were prepared by his hand; the cartoons of Signorelli being executed by Stagio Sassoli, of Arezzo. At Castiglione, in the territory of Arezzo, Luca Signorelli painted a Dead Christ, with the Maries, over the chapel of the Sacrament, and in San Francesco at Lucignano he decorated the folding doors of a press, wherein there is deposited a branch of coral, on the summit of which is formed a cross. At Siena he painted a picture for the chapel of San Cristofano, in the church of St. Agostino, wherein are