Saints Augustinus, Saint Catherine of Alexandria and Saint Anthony of Padua

Signorelli painted these saints in 1498, the year before he began the monumental fresco cycle in Orvieto Cathedral depicting the Last Days — the work that secured his reputation and that Michelangelo would study before painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling. This triptych panel featuring Augustine, Catherine of Alexandria, and Anthony of Padua represents his Umbrian altarpiece production during the years of greatest artistic ambition, when his figure style was hardening into the powerful muscular forms that would define the Orvieto frescoes. The saints' physical solidity and confident spatial presence are closer to Florentine sculpture than to the gentler Umbrian tradition of Perugino.

Signorelli renders drapery in angular, structural folds that emphasize the body beneath rather than the textile above — a sculptural approach shaped by his study of Antonio Pollaiuolo and by his own sustained interest in human anatomy. Faces are individuated with a directness unusual in Italian saint figures of the period. The warm tonality reflects Umbrian convention while the forms push toward something harder.