Editing Simone Martini

{{short description|Italian painter from the 14th century (1284–1344)}}
{{Infobox artist
| image = Simone Martini - Frontispice du Virgile.jpg|
| caption = ''[[Petrarch]]'s Virgil (title page)'' ({{Circa|1336}}) <br />Illuminated manuscript, 29,5&nbsp;x 20&nbsp;cm <br />Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan
| name = Simone Martini
| birth_name = Simone Martini
| birth_date = {{circa|1284}}
| birth_place = [[Siena]], [[Republic of Siena]]
| death_date = {{death date and age|1344|7||1284}}
| death_place = [[Avignon]], [[Comtat Venaissin]], [[Papal States]]
| nationality = Italian
| field = [[Painting]], [[Fresco]]
| training = [[Duccio|Duccio di Buoninsegna]]
| movement = [[International Gothic]]
| works = ''[[Annunciation with St. Margaret and St. Ansanus]]''
}}

'''Simone Martini''' ({{circa|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|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|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 (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.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
Image:Galería Uffizi, Florencia, Italia, 2022-09-18, DD 26.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|[[Pisa Polyptych|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 (Simone Martini)|Maestà]]'',  1315, [[Palazzo Pubblico]], Siena
File:SIMONE_MARTINI_Maestà_(detail)_1315.jpg|Detail of the ''Maesta''
</gallery>

==See also==
* [[Memmo di Filippuccio]]

==Sources==
* {{cite book
 | author=Vasari, Giorgio
 |author2=translation by George Bull
 | title=Lives of the Artists
 | publisher=Penguin Classics
 | year=1965
 }}
{{reflist}}

==External links==
{{Commons category|Simone Martini}}
* {{CathEncy|wstitle=Simone Martini}}
* [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Frescos_by_Simone_Martini_in_the_Lower_Basilica_in_Assisi Frescoes by Simone Martini in the Lower Basilica in Assisi]
* [http://www.wga.hu/tours/siena/simone.html#outline Art of Simone Martini]
* [http://artpaintingartist.org/simone-martini-gothic-painter Simone Martini] – Gothic Painter
* [https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.1875.html Simone Martini at the National Gallery of Art]

{{Simone Martini}}
{{Petrarch}}

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