1283-1344 Italian Simone Martini Locations 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. His brother-in-law was the artist Lippo Memmi. Very little documentation survives regarding Simone's life, and many attributions are debated by art historians. Simone Martini died while in the service of the Papal court at Avignon in 1344. Simone was doubtlessly apprenticed from an early age, as would have been the normal practice. Among his first documented works is the Maest?? of 1315 in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. A copy of the work, executed shortly thereafter by Lippo Memmi in San Gimignano, testifies to the enduring influence Simone's prototypes would have on other artists throughout the fourteenth 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 unsurpassed 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 major works include the Maest?? (1315) in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, St Louis of Toulouse Crowning the King at the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples (1317), the S. Caterina Polyptych in Pisa (1319) and the Annunciation and two Saints at the Uffizi in Florence (1333), as well as frescoes in the Chapel of St. Martin in the lower church of the Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi. Francis Petrarch became friend with Simone while in Avignon, and two of his sonnets make reference to a portrait of Laura de Noves he supposedly painted for the poet.   Related Paintings of Simone Martini :. | Maesta | Equestrian portrait of Guidoriccio da Fogliano | Blessed Agostino Novello Altarpiece | St Clare and St Elizabeth of Hungary | St Louis of France and St Louis of Toulouse |
Related Artists:
Bartholomaus Spranger
Antwerp 1546-Prague 1611
Domenico Quaglio
(1787-1837) was a German painter, engraver, stage designer, and architect. He was the second son of Giuseppe Quaglio and part of the large Quaglio pedigree of Italian artists involved in architecture, indoor fresco decoration, and scenography for the court theaters. He known as a landscape and architectural painter/decorator, including quadratura. He was born in Munich. He was taught perspective and scene-painting by his father, and engraving by Mettenleiter and Karl Hess. In 1819 he resigned his post as scene-painter, and occupied himself only with architecture, for which he obtained subjects in the Netherlands, Italy, France, and England. As architect in charge, Domenico Quaglio was responsible for the neogothic style of the exterior design of Hohenschwangau Castle, summer and hunting residence of King Maximilian II of Bavaria, son of King Ludwig I of Bavaria and father of King Ludwig II. Quaglio died at Hohenschwangau in 1837.
Robert Breyer
German, 1866-1941