[206] Nothing is known about Mantegna's stay in Florence. He went to meet the Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga at Bologna. This Cardinal, a great amateur of music and connoisseur in relics of antiquity, came to Mantua in August, 1472, where the "Orfeo" of Messer Angelo Poliziano was produced for his amusement. [207] That he could conceive a stern and tragic subject, with all the passion it required, is, however, proved not only by the frescoes at Orvieto, but also by the powerful oil-painting of the "Crucifixion" at Borgo San Sepolcro. [208] This story has been used for verse in a way to heighten its romantic colouring. Such as the lines are, I subjoin them for the sake of their attempt to emphasize and illustrate Renaissance feeling:-- "Vasari tells that Luca Signorelli, The morning star of Michael Angelo, Had but one son, a youth of seventeen summers, Who died. That day the master at his easel Wielded the liberal brush wherewith he painted At Orvieto, on the Duomo's walls, Stern forms of Death and Heaven and Hell and Judgment. Then came they to him, cried: 'Thy son is dead, Slain in a duel: but the bloom of life Yet lingers round red lips and downy cheek.' Luca spoke not, but listened. Next they bore His dead son to the silent painting-room, And left on tip toe son and sire alone. Still Luca spoke and groaned not; but he raised The wonderful dead youth, and smoothed his hair, Washed his red wounds, and laid him on a bed, Naked and beautiful, where rosy curtains Shed a soft glimmer of uncertain splendour Life-like upon the marble limbs below. Then Luca seized his palette: hour by hour Silence was in the room; none durst approach: Morn wore to noon, and noon to eve, when shyly A little maid peeped in and saw the painter Painting his dead son with unerring hand-stroke, Firm and dry-eyed before the lordly canvas." [209] See the article on Orvieto in my _Sketches in Italy and Greece_. [210] The earlier frescoes of Fra Angelico, on the roof, depict Christ as Judge. But there is nothing in common with these works and Signorelli's. [211] This is the conjecture of Signor Luzi (_Il Duomo di Orvieto_, p. 168). He bases it upon the Dantesque subjects illustrated, and quotes from the "Inferno":-- "Omero poeta sovrano; L' altro è Orazio satiro che viene, Ovidio è il terzo, e l' ultimo Lucano." Nothing is more marked or more deeply interesting than the influence exercised by Dante over Signorelli, an influence he shared with Giotto, Orcagna, Botticelli, Michael Angelo, the greatest imaginative painters of Central Italy. [212] The background to the circular "Madonna" in the Uffizzi, the "Flagellation of Christ" in the Academy at Florence and in the Brera at Milan, and the "Adam" at Cortona, belong to this grade. [213] We may add the pages in a predella representing the "Adoration of the Magi" in the Uffizzi.