LORENZETTI, AMBROGIO and PIETRO. - Brother painters from Siena.
I. AMBROGIO
The first universally accepted date concerning him is 1319. In 1331 Tizio reliably reported the frescoes in the cloister of S. Francesco in Siena, of which two scenes remain (Martyrdom of the Franciscan saints at Ceuta and St. Louis of Anjou taking the Franciscan vows in the hands of Boniface VIII), now in a chapel of the church.Between 1332 and 1334 he was enrolled in the Arte dei Medici e Speziali in Florence, and in 1332 he painted frescoes of the Stories of St. Nicholas for the church of S. Procolo in Florence (now lost), and perhaps two panels, now dismantled: two side panels (St. Procolo and St. Nicholas) are preserved in the Museo Bandini in Fiesole, and four small Stories of St. Nicholas from Bari are in the Uffizi (nos. 8348 and 8349). The frescoes (now lost) in the church of S. Margherita in Cortona date to 1335, and together with his brother Pietro he executed some Stories of the Virgin on the façade of the Spedale di S. Maria della Scala in Siena (destroyed in 1720). From 1337 to 1339 he frescoed the Sala dei Nove in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena with the Allegories and Effects of Good and Bad Government, and in the loggia of the same palace he painted a Madonna and Child in 1340. The Presentation in the Temple, now in the Uffizi (no. 8346), is signed and dated 1342, and the Annunciation for the Gabella in Siena, now in the Pinacoteca (no. 88), is signed and dated 1344. The last documentary notice of A. dates to 1347, and he probably
Lorrain, Claude Gellée, known as — Landscape with the Rest on the Flight into Egypt — Rome, Doria Gallery.
died of the plague in 1348. In addition to the aforementioned works, all securely documented or dated, several panels in Siena are of particular importance and now undisputed attribution: in the Pinacoteca (Madonna between St. Mary Magdalene and St. Dorothy, from S. Petronilla [no. 77]; Madonna with Angels and Saints [no. 65]; Madonna known as the Madonna of the Serre di Rapolano [no. 605]; two Landscapes [nos. 70 and 71]), in the Museo dell'Opera (the saints Francis, Mary Magdalene, Catherine, and Benedict), in the Archiepiscopal Seminary (Madonna of the Milk), in Massa Marittima (Madonna between Angels and Saints known as the Maestà in the Palazzo Comunale), in Roccalbegna (Madonna in the parish church), in Badia a Roti (Madonna and St. Michael Archangel in the parish church), in Milan (Madonna formerly in the Cagnola collection, now in Brera), in New York (Madonnas in the Blumenthal and Lehman collections), in Frankfurt (two Polyptychs in the Staedel Institute), in Budapest (Madonna in the Gallery), in Cambridge, Mass. (Crucifixion in the Fogg Museum), in Zurich (Holy Family in the Abegg collection), etc. Recently (1944), a fresco depicting the Madonna and various saints was discovered in a chapel of the church of S. Agostino in Siena; but the attribution of this last work to A., as well as the frescoes in the chapel of S. Galgano at Montesiepi near Siena and other minor paintings, is not universally accepted.
Ambrogio’s personality is perhaps the most complete and rich in problems among those presented by Sienese painting of the Trecento; and the profound originality of his language must be clarified in relation to the various cultural experiences to which the artist proved sensitive. In the early Madonna of Vico l'Abate, he appears oriented rather toward Florence, and Giotto in particular, than toward the preceding Sienese tradition: yet already the gravity and volumetric quality of Giottesque painting are personally interpreted and translated into a predominantly chromatic and linear sense.