Editing Simone Martini (section)

==Biography==
Simone was doubtlessly apprenticed from an early age, as would have been the normal practice. Among his first documented works is the ''[[Maestà (Simone Martini)|Maestà]]'' of 1315 in the [[Palazzo Pubblico]] in [[Siena]].<ref name=EB1911>{{cite EB1911 |wstitle=Martini, Simone |volume=17 |last= Rossetti | first= William Michael |author-link= William Michael Rossetti |page=801|short=1}}</ref> 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 [[Florence|Florentine]] art, and is noted for its soft, stylized, decorative features, sinuosity of line, and courtly elegance. Simone's art owes much to French [[Illuminated manuscript|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]].<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=D-HPsDLAD2sC Il costume antico e moderno, ovvero Storia del governo, della milizia, delle religion, delle arte, scienza ed usanze de tutti], volume 3, by Giulio Ferrario (1833) p. 72.</ref><ref>Matteo Camera refers to him erroneously as Simone Memmi, conflating Martini and his pupil [[Lippo Memmi]], in [https://books.google.com/books?id=cFFHAAAAYAAJ Elucubrazioni storico-diplomatiche su Giovanna I.a, regina di Napoli e Carlo III di Durazzo], Salerno (1889): page 139.</ref>

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 [[Chapel of St. Martin|San Martino Chapel]]<ref name=EB1911/> 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. [[Petrarch|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 [[Avignon Papacy|Papal court]] at [[Avignon]] in 1344 having likely moved there in 1334 or 1335.