CORTONA.- Starting this June 23rd until October 8th, Cortona celebrates the painter who was a “beacon for the greatest Renaissance artists” with a carefully curated exhibition that traces his artistic evolution, accompanied by thematic itineraries through the town and in key places in Tuscany and Umbria.

An extraordinary innovator of the Renaissance period, Luca Signorelli (1450 – 1523), born as Luca d’Egidio di Ventura or Luca da Cortona, has been a somewhat elusive figure for critics and the public alike; yet, he was fundamental in blazing a trail for Raphael and Michelangelo, the two giants who, ironically, would end up overshadowing his fame.

In October 1523, Luca, then “old and affected by tremors” exhaled his last breath. On the 500th anniversary of his death, Cortona – the birth town to which he remained attached throughout his life, even holding several public offices there despite his frequent travels and periods away – sheds new light on the artist, with the exceptional exhibition ‘Signorelli 500. Maestro Luca da Cortona, painter of light and poetry’, sponsored by the Municipality of Cortona, MAEC-Museum of the Etruscan Academy and the City of Cortona under the aegis of the National Committee for celebrations set up by the Ministry of Culture, organised by Villaggio Globale International and curated by Tom Henry, a leading scholar of Signorelli, Emeritus Professor at the University of Kent and former Director of the School of Classical and Renaissance Studies at the English University in Rome.

The eagerly awaited exhibition at Palazzo Casali (home to the MAEC) from 23 June to 8 October 2023 places the spotlight on Signorelli’s work as a painter to trace his career, highlighting the power of his colourism, the scope and originality of his invention so deeply admired by Vasari, the narrative power of his works and his ability to move beyond his contemporaries to become a “beacon for the High Renaissance”.

What makes it difficult to provide a comprehensive overview of Signorelli’s career – which spanned 60 years and saw famous patrons such as Pandolfo Petrucci ‘the Magnificent’, Lorenzo de’ Medici, Pope Sixtus IV and Pope Julius II – is the geographical dispersal of his paintings, in Italy and abroad, including the stunning fresco cycles that made him famous, which are obviously immovable.

The Cortona exhibition, by bringing together in Luca’s hometown after 70 years around 30 of the artist’s works from prestigious Italian and foreign museums, including important loans from private collections and from across the ocean, is an opportunity to celebrate Luca da Cortona and definitively confirm his rightful place among the great artists of his time, also in the light of the studies of recent years.

The exhibition is accompanied by ‘Signorelli’s Itineraries’ – both in town, at the Diocesan Museum and in the church of San Niccolò, and across Tuscany and Umbria, covering the places that house important works of the Maestro – designed by the curators through agreements and collaborations with local authorities and institutions to offer a truly comprehensive overview of the painter’s work. This network will draw attention to the works of the great Renaissance painter scattered in the territory around Cortona – and will become a permanent feature thanks to a guidebook that accompanies the exhibition catalogue (both published by Skira), maps, multisite tickets, etc.

Coming from such diverse places as the Gallerie degli Uffizi in Florence, the National Capodimonte Museum in Naples, the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris, the National Gallery in London, the Museum of the Opera del Duomo in Orvieto, the Pinacoteca Comunale in Sansepolcro, the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the paintings in the exhibition have been selected for their outstanding quality and their representativeness of each decade of Signorelli’s activity, starting with one of his very first works still under the influence and teachings of Piero della Francesca, from an American private collection.

Alongside some important restorations carried out for the occasion, starting with the tondo depicting The Virgin and Child with Saints from the Etruscan Academy of Cortona, the exhibition features several new scientific projects, including, for example: the recomposition, to the extent possible, of the extraordinary Matelica Altarpiece, painted in 1504-1505 for the church of Sant’Agostino in Matelica, which was dismembered and dispersed around the world in the mid-18th century; the two precious panels depicting the Birth and The Miracle of St Nicholas (circa 1508 - 1510), for the first time back in Italy from the United States (Atlanta); and again the joining, a first in modern times, of the central panel of the Polyptych of the Church of Santa Lucia in Montepulciano – depicting the Madonna and Child Enthroned – with its predella, composed of three panels on loan from the Uffizi in Florence, in which Signorelli shows all his narrative talent.

Indeed, imaginative power and visual inventiveness are rare qualities recognised in the great artist by his contemporary, courtier, painter and poet Giovanni Santi who, using a term usually reserved for the liberal arts, defined the painter from Cortona as being “d’ingegno e spirito pelegrino” to emphasise his lively intellect; but also by the great biographer Vasari who, apart from Filippino Lippi, expressly mentioned only Signorelli as an example of imaginative capacity in a 15th-century artist, recalling the frescoes in the Cathedral at Orvieto.

Because Luca, writes Vasari, was “the man who, with his profound mastery of design, particularly in nudes, and with his grace in invention and in the composition of scenes, opened to the majority of craftsmen the way to the final perfection of art.”

“Turning to why Luca Signorelli matters – writes Tom Henry in the introductory essay to the exhibition catalogue – the short answer is that he merits an important place in the history of fifteenth-century painting on the basis of his accomplishments as a great colourist, a sculptural painter, and as a highly individual iconographer... This is why he matters in the development of Italian Renaissance art. The art of Raphael and Michelangelo would have developed differently without the spur of Signorelli; and the excitement of a monographic exhibition is that one can show this.”

“Signorelli 500” will also feature a rich programme of accompanying events – conferences, concerts, lectures etc. – centred on Signorelli and his historical and cultural environment, highlighting the factors that shaped the transition between the 15th and 16th centuries in central Italy.