Simone Memmi

Simone Martini ( – 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 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.Matteo Camera refers to him erroneously as Simone Memmi, conflating Martini and his pupil Lippo Memmi, i
Elucubrazioni storico-diplomatiche su Giovanna I.a, regina di Napoli e Carlo III di Durazzo
Salerno (1889): page 139.

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 remains. 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.

Gallery

Image:Simone Martini — Annunciation with St. Margaret and St. Ansanus.jpg, The '' Annunciation with St. Margaret and St. Ansanus'', 1333
Image:Simone Martini 068+069.jpg, '' Annunciation Diptych'', c. 1333-1340
Image:Simone Martini 012.jpg, Saint Catherine of Alexandria Polyptych, 1319
File:Simone Martini - Boston Polyptych.jpg, ''Virgin and Child with Saints'' (Boston Polyptych), c. 1321–25
File:Simone Martini 071.jpg, ''The Miracle of the Child Attacked and Rescued'' from the Blessed Agostino Novello Triptych, c. 1328
File:Simone Martini - Christ Discovered in the Temple - Google Art Project.jpg, ''Christ Discovered in the Temple,'' 1342
File:Simone_Martini_-_Maestà_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg, ''Maestà'', 1315, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena
File:SIMONE_MARTINI_Maestà_(detail)_1315.jpg, Detail of the ''Maesta''

See also

* Memmo di Filippuccio

Sources

*

External links

*

Frescoes by Simone Martini in the Lower Basilica in Assisi



Simone Martini
– Gothic Painter

{{DEFAULTSORT:Martini, Simone
1280s births
1344 deaths
13th-century Italian painters
Italian male painters
14th-century Italian painters
Italian Roman Catholics
Painters from Siena
Gothic painters
Catholic painters