Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/360

352 Fiesole. He there represented scenes descriptive of the Last Judgment, with most singular and fanciful invention. Angels, demons, earthquakes, ruins, fires, miracles of Antichrist, and many other objects of similar kind, are depicted in this work, with nude forms, varied foreshortenings, and many beautiful figures, the master having imagined to himself all that shall go to make up the terrors of that last and tremendous day. By this performance the artist enlightened the minds of all who came after him, for whom he has, indeed, greatly diminished the difficulties attendant on that mode of representation: nor am I surprised that the works of Luca were ever highly extolled by Michelagnolo, or that for his divine work of the Last Judgment, painted in the chapel (Sistine), he should have courteously availed himself, to a certain extent, of the inventions of that artist, as, for example, in the angels and demons, in the divisions of the heavens, and some other parts, wherein Michelagnolo imitated the mode of treatment adopted by Luca, as may be seen by every one.

In the work here alluded to are numerous portraits of the friends of Luca, as also his own: among others are those of Niccolo, Paolo, and Vitellozzo Vitelli, Giovan-Paolo and Orazio Baglioni, and many others, whose names are not known. In Santa Maria di Loretto, Signorelli painted certain frescoes in the Sacristy, the Four Evangelists namely, with the Four Doctors, and other Saints, all very beautiful: for this work he was most liberally remunerated by Pope Sixtus. It is related of Luca Signorelli that he had a son killed in Cortona, a youth of singular beauty in face and person, whom he had tenderly loved. In his deep grief, the father caused his child to be despoiled of his clothing, and, with