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 :. | Equestrian portrait of Guidoriccio da Fogliano | The Angel of the Annunciation | Madonna with Child (mk39) | Madona de la Misericordia | Blessed Agostino Novello Altarpiece |
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Cristofano Gherardi
(November 25, 1508 - April 1556) was an Italian painter of the late-Renaissance or Mannerist period, active mainly in Florence and Tuscany. He was born in Borgo San Sepolcro and also called il Doceno dal Borgo. He was the pupil of the painter Raffaellino del Colle, in whose shop he encountered Rosso Fiorentino and Giorgio Vasari. He painted under Vasari's direction, the one assistant of Vasari's whom Sidney J. Freedberg singles out. In 1536 Vasari invited him to Florence to assist in producing the decorations for the ceremonial entry of Charles V into Florence. The following year, in the reaction after Duke Alessandro's death, Gherardi was among those banished from Florence, so his work for Vasari was confined to projects outside Florence, until his banishment was lifted in 1554 and he was permitted to return . In the long interval he had painted the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth for the church of San Domenico in Citte di Castello, church decorations in San Sepolcro, and works for the Vitelli, who were long-term patrons. Gherardi, in the two years left to him, assisted Vasari in the Quartiere degli Elementi in Palazzo Vecchio. Vasari's main assistant after Gherardi's demise was Jan van der Straat, called Giovanni Stradano.