Masterpiece: Luca Signorelli's Apocalyptic Frescoes--Vivid Visions of the End
The Renaissance artist's paintings in Orvieto's San Brizio Chapel comprise dynamic, monumental and fiercely realistic scenes inspired by the Book of Revelation.

When they first were revealed, the frescoes in the San Brizio Chapel of the majestic cathedral in Orvieto, Italy, both awed visitors and shocked them. The realistic scenes (1499-1504), portraying the end of the world and inspired by the Book of Revelation, were terrifying enough on their own. Added to that was the lifelike portrayal of dozens of nude bodies—in a church! They were vivid, dynamic and monumental in size, painted by Luca Signorelli from nearby Cortona, a respected artist who had studied with Piero della Francesca but was not considered a great one.

Detail (the damned)

Fra Angelico, the beloved Dominican friar known for his serene, luminous works, had started on the chapel some 50 years before, but he died in 1455, having completed only the ceiling. After decades of stalling and financial limitations, cathedral authorities hired Signorelli (c. 1441-1523) to finish the job. He was not their first choice.

But Signorelli had a bold, singular vision for the chapel, epic in its ambition. In the four lunettes—two each on opposite sides—he created highly original tableaux for the Rule of the Antichrist, the Blessed in Paradise, the Damned in Hell and the Resurrection of the Dead; in the altar bay between them, he painted the Last Judgment. Their unforgettable power is obvious on first glance. His use of architectural features, linear perspective and foreshortening draws viewers into these complex scenes. Most notably, his considerable knowledge of anatomy—he had long studied the subject and may have dissected cadavers—allowed him to produce detailed, sculptural images of the human body in multiple positions, as they had rarely, if ever, been rendered before.

Antichrist narrative

Signorelli's daring figures influenced many artists, including Raphael and, most strikingly, Michelangelo, as he painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508-12) and, even more so, years later, in his Last Judgment on its altar wall.

Signorelli's figurative prowess is best seen in the nudes that dominate his visions of both the Damned and the Resurrection of the body. Tortured by demons whose flesh is green, purple or other anomalous colors, the doomed men and women are caught in numerous expressive poses—bent over, upside down, shrieking, flailing, fleeing, squirming—as they try to avoid their fiery fate. With their glaringly clear gluteal, pectoral and other major muscles, they appear three-dimensional. With their faces awash in fear and horror, they look ghastly. Above this scrum of bodies, as archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael keep watch, flying demons cast down more condemned humans. It's chaos.

The Damned

Signorelli's skills also stand out in his imagining of the belief that all will rise from the dead, articulated by St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians (among others): "For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality." But how? Signorelli's dead, summoned by two muscular angels blaring trumpets, surface as skeletons, climbing out of the barren ground—pushing against it to rise or helped by others who have already donned their new flesh. Some embrace one another in jubilation. On the far right, one chiseled nude man converses with grinning, anatomically correct skeletons—an example of the humor Signorelli occasionally inserted in his works.

In his most complicated panel, Signorelli takes up the Antichrist narrative. He unspools the tale's incidents in a winding, curved thread running from foreground to middle ground to background. Placed on a pedestal up front, the Antichrist, robed much like Jesus was usually depicted, appears as his evil doppelgänger—hugged tight by a horned devil whispering in his ear. As he preaches his falsities, causing confusion, some listeners turn away and are persecuted; others stay, even meeting his gaze. Behind him is a group of friars, mostly of the outspokenly anti-heretical Dominican order, one pointing skyward. In the distance, on high ground, black-clad soldiers ring an imposing temple, generally interpreted as the Antichrist's. The Antichrist appears in midground working miracles. Finally, in the upper left, Signorelli illustrates his demise, thwarted by the Archangel Michael—his death a prelude to the final events in the other lunettes—in the scene signaled by that friar.

The resurrection of the body

Close observers can detect other portentous elements, like the bribes laid at the Antichrist's feet. Scholars have suggested the presence of Dante, Thomas Aquinas, Savonarola and several well-known locals in the crowds. On the far left, two men in black, thought to be Signorelli himself and Fra Angelico, act as observers—a link to viewers, with one looking out at them and the other their seeming proxy.

The San Brizio Chapel contains many more examples of the idiosyncratic artistry that has earned Signorelli respect from art historians through time, from Giorgio Vasari to Bernard Berenson to Kenneth Clark, whose erudite 1956 book, "The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form," still ranks among the most authoritative voices on the subject. They all praise Signorelli's powerful, vigorous, realistic portrayals of human bodies in the Orvieto Cathedral, which secured for him a prominent place in the history of Renaissance art.