Brief Biography-Luca Signorelli was born in Cortona c. 1441. In his youth, he was a pupil of Piero della Francescain Arezzo while living with his uncle, Lazzaro Vasari. The latter was thus the great uncle of his biographer Giorgio Vasari. Signorelli visited the house of Vasari when Giorgio was just eight years old and instructed Giorgio to ‘Learn little cousin, learn.’
Piero strongly influenced Signorelli’s early paintings, and it was sometimes difficult to distinguish between the works of either artist; Antonio del Pollaiuolo may have also instructed him. He was famous for handling foreshortening and painting nudes, for which he became notable. Michael Angelo Buonarroti became influenced by his works and publicly acclaimed them.
In 1483, he received a commission to complete frescoes in the Sistine Chapel in Rome; they were abandoned by the artists Rosselli, Perugino, Ghirlandaio and Botticelli, supposedly because of an underpayment due to slow work. Nevertheless, Signorelli finished them in a short period.
He viewed life and death through the medium of art so much that when his son got killed in Cortona, he had his dead naked body laid out in his studio, and he painted his likeness without exhibiting emotion.
He spent his last years in Cortona, where he died in 1523. He had received such high respect from his community in Cortona that he held various public offices until his death. Apart from Rome, his paintings are in the chapels of Siena, Loreto, Perugia, Cortona, Florence, and Arezzo. His most noted works are in the Chapel of the Madonna di San Brizio, in the Cathedral of Orvieto.