Luca Signorelli

Born around 1441 in Cortona, Signorelli likely trained under Piero della Francesca in Florence, absorbing the geometry and clarity that would anchor his work. He moved through the major centers — Florence, Siena, Rome — and painted a section of the Sistine Chapel between 1478 and 1484, now lost. By his early forties he settled back in Cortona, where he kept a home base for the rest of his life while traveling for commissions across Tuscany and Umbria. Between 1499 and 1503 he completed the massive Last Judgment cycle in Orvieto Cathedral, a cascade of foreshortened bodies and anatomical precis…