Luca Signorelli

Luca Signorelli (c. 1441/1445–1523) was born in Cortona, in Tuscany, and according to his relative Giorgio Vasari was apprenticed to Piero della Francesca. He worked in Florence, Siena and Rome, where between 1478 and 1484 he painted in the Sistine Chapel, before settling again in Cortona. It remained his base while he travelled to commissions across central Italy, and he died there in 1523. He was noted above all as a draughtsman and for his use of foreshortening. His frescoes of the Apocalypse and the Last Judgment in the San Brizio chapel of Orvieto Cathedral, contracted in 1499 to complete a scheme begun by Fra Angelico, are considered his greatest work; their powerful nudes were striking in their day, and Michelangelo is said to have borrowed figures from them for his own Sistine Chapel fresco. His Martyrdom of St Sebastian at Città di Castello influenced the young Raphael. Here: The Marriage of the Virgin.