Reviews (1)

The Best Coffee Table Book to Own
I bought this book while at the Vatican so I could understand all the paintings I was about to see. It was an outstanding help and I have since shown it to numerous people who have fallen in love with all the pictures and explanations. In fact, I am ordering a copy for my mother-in-law for fear that she will not be able to relinquish my copy! One of the best parts of the book is that it shows you fold outs of the entire fresco and then spends many pages with close up pictures describing in detail what is included in the large frescos. ... Read more

Book Description

Giorgio Vasari remarked that Luca Signorelli was "as famous a painter in Italy as any one has ever been." Mentored by Piero della Francesca, he developed a unique style which was characterized by violent and torturous movement of the figures and complex iconography. In this continuation of our successful Renaissance painters' series, Signorelli experts Tom Henry and Laurence Kanter offer a thorough consideration of the artist's entire body of painting in the first comprehensive treatment of his work. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Luca Signorelli: The Complete Paintings
Tom Henry and Laurence Kanter, both highly regarded scholars of Signorelli's work, have produced the finest and most comprehensive catalogue of Luca Signorelli's paintings to date. Each scholar has museum expertise and each possesses an observant eye for stylistic and technical details, ideal qualifications for producing a complete catalogue of an artist's works. The strong point of this book is the text, which is accurate and written so well that it is comprehensible to both the scholar and the general reader. Whereas both authors contribute to the first two sections, the catalogue, which fills nearly half of the book, is largely the work of Tom Henry. Professor Henry is thoughtful and meticulous in his work. He has viewed every painting first hand to give each work careful attention.
The book is arranged as a typical catalogue, with an explanatory text followed by a chronological survey of the artist's works. The first section contains five chapters that record the major episodes of Signorelli's career, divided more or less by decade. Each chapter is followed by endnote documentation. The general overview is followed by twenty-two full-page (sometimes double-page) color plates, also arranged chronologically, that highlight Signorelli's major works. The last two sections consist of a complete catalogue of Signorelli's paintings with black and white images and a general bibliography. The authors list one hundred and forty-eight works, including autograph works, collaborative pieces, and paintings begun by Signorelli but finished by others. The authors also introduce twenty-three paintings not found in any previous Signorelli catalogue; they list eight works of uncertain attribution; and they reject sixty-four works. Selected drawings are included alongside paintings to which they relate.
Any weaknesses in the book lie in layout and design. The publisher was generous with color plates. However, the designer and authors must not have discussed the choice or placement of the 39 high-quality, full-bleed details of paintings interspersed throughout the opening pages and the five overview chapters, for they are not necessarily placed near text that discusses them. Each chapter is preceded by a color detail on the left and a white page with a chapter heading on the right. Although the details are taken from works discussed in the chapter they accompany, they may have no relation to their facing text, are never cited in the text, and often do not illustrate the authors' points. A few photographic diagrams in the catalogue section reconstruct the possible arrangement of various parts of mutilated altarpieces. One photograph gives a partial sense of the total space in the fresco program at Orvieto, Signorelli's acknowledged masterwork.
Both authors keep Signorelli's importance in his own day in the forefront of their passages as they point out his major contributions to Italian Renaissance painting. The superb scholarship and accessible text of Henry and Kanter should help raise Signorelli from his undeserved relative anonymity to the prominent position he held in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. ... Read more

Book Description

A major monument, Luca Signorelli's Orvieto Cathedral frescoes rendered with vigor and invective the most ambitious consideration of the Apocalypse and the Last Judgment in Italian Renaissance art. In a fresh interpretation of these frescoes, Jonathan Riess explores the intriguing, violent style and complex iconography and places the works in their richly faceted historical setting. Begun by Fra Angelico in 1447 and completed by Signorelli at the turn of the century, the frescoes reflect the turmoil within the Papal States, the suffering brought on by a surge of natural disasters, the fear of the Turks, and the anti-Judaic campaigns of the day. The book centers on the mural depicting the Rule of Antichrist, the single monumental portrayal of the subject during the Renaissance and a revealing indicator of widespread apocalyptic obsessions.

Drawing on historical, theological, literary, and artistic sources, Riess examines the reasons behind the commissioning of the murals and considers the broad meaning of the program. The Rule of Antichrist, for example, is seen as a summa of the doom-laden worlds of Rome and Orvieto and as a blistering condemnation of the political realm. Signorelli's references to Dante, Virgil,and Cicero and to contemporary theology and dramatic performances come into play as Riess interprets the monument as a representation of the struggle between a penitential Christianity and the forces of heresy and tyranny. ... Read more

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Renaissance Quarterly, published by Renaissance Society of America on December 22, 1997. The length of the article is 595 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The Renaissance Antichrist: Lucas Signorelli's Orvieto Frescoes.
Author: Laurence B. Kanter
Publication: Renaissance Quarterly (Refereed)
Date: December 22, 1997
Publisher: Renaissance Society of America
Volume: v50Issue: n4Page: p1260(2)

Article Type: Book Review

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL), published by Paddock Publications on August 5, 2003. The length of the article is 3470 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The fight of his life It started with two feuding classmates. But the battle didn't end when Kyle Signorelli's neck snapped. It was only beginning.(Suburban Living)
Author: Tona Kunz
Publication: Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL) (Newspaper)
Date: August 5, 2003
Publisher: Paddock Publications
Page: 1

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Dieciocho: Hispanic Enlightenment, published by Dieciocho on September 22, 2003. The length of the article is 12287 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: "Caro soggiorno": Pedro Napoli Signorelli en la Espana del XVIII.(historiografo y dramaturgo)
Author: Franco Quinziano
Publication: Dieciocho: Hispanic Enlightenment (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 2003
Publisher: Dieciocho
Volume: 26Issue: 2Page: 241(24)

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Dieciocho: Hispanic Enlightenment, published by Dieciocho on March 1, 2001. The length of the article is 1356 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Il vecchio e la giovane. Traduccion de Pietro Napoli Signorelli.(TT: Il vecchio e la giovane. Traduzione di Pietro Napoli Signorelli.)(Resena)
Author: Philip Deacon
Publication: Dieciocho: Hispanic Enlightenment (Refereed)
Date: March 1, 2001
Publisher: Dieciocho
Volume: 24Issue: 1Page: 178

Article Type: Resena

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL), published by Paddock Publications on December 21, 2003. The length of the article is 2867 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: 'We're a family, too' Matt Kure and his parents are haunted by the fight two years ago that left Kyle Signorelli in a wheelchair and Matt in a youth prison.(News)
Author: Christy Gutowski
Publication: Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL) (Newspaper)
Date: December 21, 2003
Publisher: Paddock Publications
Page: 1

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL), published by Paddock Publications on May 21, 2003. The length of the article is 609 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Fight that broke teen's neck at root of battery trial Court to decide if beating that made Kyle Signorelli a quadriplegic was premeditated.(News)
Author: Tona Kunz
Publication: Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL) (Newspaper)
Date: May 21, 2003
Publisher: Paddock Publications
Page: 1

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Book Description

The frescoes of the Cappella Nuova in the Cathedral of Orvieto have fascinated visitors from Michelangelo to Freud and Czelow Milosz because of their dramatic portrayal of the end of the world and the Last Judgment. Creighton Gilbert’s study draws on previously overlooked documents to explain the commissioning of this extraordinary cycle of paintings, begun by Fra Angelico in the 1400s and completed almost a half-century later by Luca Signorelli. In contrast to most other art historians, who ascribe the iconographic and formal structure of the paintings to Signorelli, Gilbert contends that his predecessor, Fra Angelico, devised the entire program of decoration. Gilbert also situates the cycle in the contexts of liturgical practice, humanistic studies, and the rich body of texts and images shaping the Renaissance conception of the coming of the Antichrist and the world’s final moments.

How Fra Angelico and Signorelli Saw the End of the World examines every element in the Cappella Nuova’s architecture and complex decoration, which represents not only the coming of the Antichrist, the end of the world, and the Last Judgment but also, on a high dado, features portraits of Dante and other poets, scenes from their texts, and sinuous grotesque ornaments. Although Dante’s likeness has long been recognized, Gilbert is the first scholar to establish that his great epic, The Divine Comedy, exerted a profound influence on the Chapel’s iconographic program. ... Read more