Simone Martini

Simone Martini
Petrarch 's Virgil (title page) ( c. 1336 ) Illuminated manuscript, 29,5 x 20 cm Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan Petrarch 's Virgil (title page) ( c. 1336 ) Illuminated manuscript, 29,5 x 20 cm Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan
Born	Simone Martini c. 1284 Siena, Republic of Siena
Died	July 1344 (aged 59–60) Avignon, Comtat Venaissin, Papal States
Education	Duccio di Buoninsegna
Known for	Painting, Fresco
Notable work	Annunciation with St. Margaret and St. Ansanus
Movement	International Gothic

Simone Martini (c. 1284 – July 1344) was an Italian painter born in Siena. He was a major figure in the development of early Italian painting and greatly influenced the development of the International Gothic style.

It is thought that Martini was a pupil of Duccio di Buoninsegna, the leading Sienese painter of his time. According to late Renaissance art biographer Giorgio Vasari, Simone was instead a pupil of Giotto di Bondone, with whom he went to Rome to paint at the Old St. Peter's Basilica, Giotto also executing a mosaic there. Martini's brother-in-law was the artist Lippo Memmi. Very little documentation of Simone's life survives, and many attributions are debated by art historians. According to E. H. Gombrich, he was a friend of Petrarch and had painted a portrait of Laura.

Biography

Simone was doubtlessly apprenticed from an early age, as would have been the normal practice. Among his first documented works is the Maestà of 1315 in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. Lippo Memmi painted a similar Maestà for the Palazzo Comunale in San Gimignano shortly afterwards, an example of the enduring influence Simone's prototypes would have on other artists throughout the 14th century. Perpetuating the Sienese tradition, Simone's style contrasted with the sobriety and monumentality of Florentine art, and is noted for its soft, stylized, decorative features, sinuosity of line, and courtly elegance. Simone's art owes much to French manuscript illumination and ivory carving: examples of such art were brought to Siena in the fourteenth century by means of the Via Francigena, a main pilgrimage and trade route from Northern Europe to Rome.

Simone's other major works include the Saint Louis of Toulouse Crowning His Brother Robert of Anjou (1317, now in the permanent collection of the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples); this work was painted during a stay in Naples at the request of the king. During this stay, putative pupils were his son Francesco, Gennaro di Cola, and Stefanone.

Simone also painted the Saint Catherine of Alexandria Polyptych in Pisa (1319) and the Annunciation with St. Margaret and St. Ansanus at the Uffizi in Florence (1333), as well as frescoes in the San Martino Chapel in the lower church of the Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi. He was commissioned to paint a series of frescos for the porch of the Avignon Cathedral of which only the faint sinopia outlines remain. Francis Petrarch became a friend of Simone's while in Avignon, and two of Petrarch's sonnets (Canzoniere 96 and 130) make reference to a portrait of Laura de Noves that Simone supposedly painted for the poet (according to Vasari). A Christ Discovered in the Temple (1342) is in the collections of Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery.

Simone Martini died while in the service of the Papal court at Avignon in 1344, having likely moved there in 1334 or 1335.

See also

• Memmo di Filippuccio

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Simone Martini — (Also known as SIMONE DI MARTINO, and as SIMONE MEMMI).

Sienese painter, born in Siena, 1283; died either in the same place or at Avignon in 1344 or 1349. This artist is now declared to have been a direct pupil of Duccio, whom he surpassed in the decorative quality of his work Vasari states that he was a pupil of Giotto, but this statement is refuted by an examination of Simone's works, and also by all the evidence that has been gathered regarding the Sienese school. The earliest of Simone's authentic works is his great fresco in Siena of the enthroned Virgin and Child, painted originally in 1315, and restored by the master himself in 1321, after it had suffered damage from damp. In 1320 he painted an altar-piece for the church of St. Catherine at Pisa, which has now been taken to pieces, and although the greater part is in the Academy at Pisa, two other portions are in other buildings in the same city. In the following year he was at Orvieto, painting an altar-piece for the church of San Dominico which is now preserved in a museum of that city, and then he returned to Siena, where he was busily engaged in 1328 on his splendid portrait of Fogliano, painted in honour of that general's capture of Montemassi. A little later on we hear of him at Assisi, where he painted a wonderful series of works relating to the life of St. Martin, adorning the chapel of St. Martin in the church of San Francesco. The latter part of his life was passed at Avignon in the service of the papal court then resident in that place, and there he decorated various portions of the cathedral and several chapels and rooms in the papal palace. It was in Avignon that he met Petrarch, and there painted the portrait, so famous in later years, of Madonna Laura.

He is said to have painted a portrait at Avignon of Petrarch himself, commissioned by Pandolfo Malatesta, but if he did this, it was during an earlier visit to Avignon, and respecting it we have not much information. We are only certain concerning his second visit to the place after having been called by Pope Clement VI. The exact date of his funeral is proved by certain Sienese records as 4 August, 1344, but the record is not sufficiently clear as to whether his body was transported from Avignon to Siena for burial, or whether he actually died in Siena. There are several of his works in the city of his birth, one at the Louvre, one in Berlin, an exceedingly fine one at Antwerp, and a remarkable signed and dated picture at Liverpool. In the museum at Altenburg there is one of his works, and there are at least three in private collections in America. The portrait of Petrarch attributed to him was sold in 1867 at the Poniatowski sale, and at the same sale there was sold a portrait of Laura, which was undoubtedly his work.

See special manuscript material gathered up in Siena by Lucy Ollcott; VASARI, Le Vite dei Pittori, Milanesi edition (Florence, 1878, 1885); VALLE, Lettres Senesi (Rome, 1782), and other works by the same author.

Bibliography

• Vasari, Giorgio; translation by George Bull (1965). Lives of the Artists. Penguin Classics.

External links

• Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Simone Martini". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
• Frescoes by Simone Martini in the Lower Basilica in Assisi
• Art of Simone Martini
• Simone Martini – Gothic Painter
• Simone Martini at the National Gallery of Art