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| Luca Signorelli Conversion of Paul ca. 1477-82 fresco Basilica della Santa Casa, Loreto |
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| Luca Signorelli Flagellation ca. 1480 tempera on panel Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan |
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| Luca Signorelli Pala di Sant'Onofrio 1484 oil on panel Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Perugia |
– Giorgio Vasari, from his Life of Luca Signorelli of Cortona, Painter (1568)
"Vasari, who claimed to be a distant relative of Signorelli, wrote a well-informed biography of the painter, celebrating his fame and success in terms that modern critics consider somewhat overestimated."
– curator's notes from the National Gallery of Art
"This work [a devotional painting by Signorelli] was brought from Cortona to Arezzo on the shoulders of the men of that Company; and Luca, old as he was, insisted on coming to set it in place, and partly also in order to revisit his friends and relatives. And since he lodged in the house of the Vasari, in which I then was, a little boy of eight years old, I remember that the good old man, who was most gracious and courteous, having heard from the master who was teaching me my first letters, that I gave my attention to nothing in lesson-time save to drawing figures, I remember, I say, that he turned to my father Antonio and said to him: 'Antonio, if you wish little Giorgio not to become backward, by all means let him learn to draw, for, even were he to devote himself to letters, design cannot be otherwise than helpful, honorable, and advantageous to him, as it is to every gentleman.' Then, turning to me, who was standing in front of him, he said: 'Mind your lessons, little kinsman.' He said many other things about me, which I withhold, for the reason that I know that I have failed by a great measure to justify the opinion which the good old man had of me. And since he heard, as was true, that the blood used to flow from my nose at that age in such quantities that this left me sometimes half dead, with infinite lovingness he bound a jasper round my neck with his own hand; and this memory of Luca will stay forever fixed in my mind."
– Giorgio Vasari, from his Life of Luca Signorelli of Cortona, Painter (1568)
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| Luca Signorelli Nude youths carrying young woman and young man ca. 1490-95 drawing Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin |
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| Luca Signorelli Portrait of an older man 1492 oil and tempera on panel Gemäldegalerie, Berlin |
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| Luca Signorelli Madonna and Child enthroned with Saints and Angels 1490s oil and tempera on panel Pinacoteca e Museo Civico, Volterra |
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| Luca Signorelli Holy Family with Saints Zachary, Elizabeth and St John the Baptist after 1512 oil on panel Gemäldegalerie, Berlin |
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| Luca Signorelli Lamentation 1502 tempera on panel Museo Diocesano di Cortona |
The large Lamentation altarpiece (above) still retains four miniature predella paintings (below) with earlier scenes from the Passion of Christ. These compressed and elongated images are built-in along the bottom of the panel, end-to-end – as ornamental extensions of the storytelling.
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| Luca Signorelli Lamentation predella - Last Supper 1502 tempera on panel Museo Diocesano di Cortona |
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| Luca Signorelli Lamentation predella - Agony in the Garden 1502 tempera on panel Museo Diocesano di Cortona |
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| Luca Signorelli Lamentation predella - Betrayal of Christ 1502 tempera on panel Museo Diocesano di Cortona |
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| Luca Signorelli Lamentation predella - Flagellation 1502 tempera on panel Museo Diocesano di Cortona |
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| Luca Signorelli Coronation of the Virgin 1508 oil and tempera on panel San Diego Museum of Art |
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| Luca Signorelli Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels ca. 1515-19 oil on panel National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |