Allegory of Fertility and Abundance

Signorelli painted this around 1500, in the same years he was covering a chapel in Orvieto with crowds of figures. This panel could hardly be more different in mood. It is worked almost like carved stone, in a narrow range of browns and greys, so that the seated woman with her cornucopia and the children around her read as an antique relief brought to life. That was the point. A humanist collector wanted something for a studiolo, the small private study where a learned man kept his books and curiosities, and the fashion was for anything that recalled ancient Rome. So a Christian painter turned to a pagan image of plenty and made a painting pretend to be sculpture. The horn spilling fruit at her side is the old Roman sign of abundance.