ABSTRACT

The story of a mature artist advising an aspiring artist to learn to draw is a familiar device in Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists. 2 In his own case, Vasari credited Luca Signorelli as his motivating force, claiming that the elder artist had passed on the following advice to his father:

Antonio, poiché Giorgino non tralinga, fa ch'egli impari a disegnare in ogni modo; perché quando anco attendesse alle lettere, non gli può essere il disegno, siccome é a tutti i galantuomini, se non d'utile, d'onore e di giovamento. 3

Antonio, so that Giorgio does not fall behind, be certain that he learns to draw, for even if he were to devote himself to letters, drawing cannot but be useful, honourable, and advantageous to him, as it is to every gentleman.

Despite the fact that this topos may be a device used by Vasari to underline the importance of drawing, it is nevertheless a reflection of his esteem for Signorelli's draughtsmanship. Indeed, the artist who was able to design and paint the huge number of nudes on the walls of the Cappella Nuova in Orvieto Cathedral must have had a sound understanding of draughtsmanship, especially of the human form. The majority of Signorelli's forty or so surviving drawings are studies of the human figure. The subjects of these studies range from clothed to naked figures and from single figures to multiple figure groups. Throughout his career, it is evident that Signorelli was striving to depict the musculature and proportions of the human body, both in movement and at rest, in as naturalistic a manner as possible.