MARTINI, SIMONE (SIMONE di MARTINO). - Painter, b. in Siena, according to Vasari in 1284, d. in Avignon in 1344. Together with Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti he is one of the major exponents of that Sienese school which, begun at the end of the 13th century by Duccio di Boninsegna, developed, not without mutual influences, alongside the Florentine Giottesque school, throughout the 14th century and a good part of the 15th. He accomplishes the transition from Romanesque-Byzantine to Gothic already begun by Duccio and creates a pictorial current which, flowing back into France through the work of S. M. himself and of his followers at Avignon, contributes to a large extent to the formation of that new phase of transalpine painting (known under the name of "International Gothic") which matured in the first decades of the 15th century and immediately spread to Italy as well.
The documented activity of M. begins with the fresco of the Maestà (Siena, Palazzo pubblico). Painted in 1315, when the painter was, according to the probable Vasarian chronology, already thirty, it reveals a fully formed artist and one capable of competing with the still living Duccio di Boninsegna, author of the polyptych of the Maestà of the Cathedral. If nothing is known of S.'s beginnings, the surviving works indicate clearly how he was trained in the circle of Duccio, from whom he drew not only the compositional scheme and certain typological elements of the Maestà, but also and above all the value of certain plastic notations that came to Duccio from his classical-Neo-Hellenistic education. Modern attributions referring to the youthful period of M. are inspired by this conviction: works that either imply, like the Boston triptych (Museum of Fine Arts, Crucifixion between St. Nicholas and St. Gregory), a collaboration with the master (to whom the central part would belong), or reveal clear influences of his, like the Redeemer of the Vatican, that of Naples (Pinacoteca) and the Maestà of Massa Marittima (Cathedral), generally ascribed to Segna di Bonaventura, a direct follower of Duccio.
From Duccio, S. M. also drew the impulse to observe the manners of French Gothic painting, which had penetrated into Italy through the works of illuminators and glass painters, and from it he learned the elegant linearism that served him to overcome the last Byzantine survivals still present in the master. The art of M. wavers, gently restless, between accents of more rigorous plasticism and of more persuasive spatiality and delicate surface inlays of colorism. The former are evident in the Maestà, far more constructed and articulated than the analogous Duccesque composition; the latter appear in the altarpiece of St. Louis crowning Robert of Anjou (Stories of the Saint in the predella, signed: Naples, Pinacoteca, formerly in S. Lorenzo Maggiore) datable to 1317 and probably executed in Naples, where the Angevin King, precisely in that year, assigned a pension to the painter, and where he certainly had the opportunity to deepen his knowledge of French Gothic culture widely diffused at that court; and they reappear a few years later, in 1321, in the partial repainting that Simone executed of the central figures of the Maestà (the Madonna with the Child and the two nearest saints), which present a pictorial consistency much more tenuous than the rest of the composition. In this central period of his activity, however, Simone more often tends to fuse the motifs of his vision into an elegant compromise, between linear rhythm and the delicate evidence of relief, as appears in the polyptych of the Museum of Pisa (signed and documented to the year 1320; formerly in S. Caterina), in that of Orvieto (Museo Civico, signed and marked with a barely legible date, formerly in S. Domenico) and finally in that of Boston (Gardner collection, formerly at Orvieto, Mazzocchi collection): works for all of which the probability of an intervention by his brother-in-law Lippo Memmi is debated.
A separate mention deserves the fresco of Guidoriccio da Fogliano (1328, Siena, Palazzo Pubblico): in that over the chromatic effect of the whites and blacks, standing out in the horse's caparison and in the knight's garments, the limitless sense of space dominates.
For more than a century historiography has been unanimous in recognizing to Simone the frescoes with the Stories of St. Martin in the chapel dedicated to this Saint in the lower church of S. Francesco in Assisi. Referable to the period between the Pisan polyptych and the fresco of Guidoriccio, the frescoes present again vigorously the plastic elements of the first redaction of the Maestà, accompanied by equally effective perspectival touches and by a lively study of inhabited interiors and of costumes, which was to be the seed, in Sienese art, of a current of widely diffused taste, to which the two Lorenzetti adhered first. To the frescoes of the chapel of St. Martin must be joined: two frescoes with figures of Saints, in the function of polyptychs, also in the lower church, the stained-glass windows of the chapel of St. Louis, whose design in all probability belongs to Simone himself, while for those of the chapel of St. Martin the intervention of the school is mostly admitted; the triptych of Altomonte (Calabria), recently published by Paccagnini, in which however only the central part representing a St. Ladislaus can probably be ascribed to Simone; and finally the antependium of the Blessed Agostino Novello (Siena, S. Agostino) which, restored to its primitive appearance by a happy restoration, is today, after agitated vicissitudes of attribution, at least in part (the figure of the Saint), unanimously recognized as a work of M.
Another peak is reached with the Annunciation of the Uffizi (dated to 1333 and bearing, besides the name of Simone, also that of Lippo Memmi, to whom the lateral figures of St. Ansano and Judith must belong; formerly in the Cathedral), preluding with immediate evidence to the works of the last period in the sharp breakings of the edge of the mantle, which rhythmically accompany, accentuating it, the sensitive shrinking back of the Virgin at the angelic announcement.
In 1339 Simone departed for Avignon, where he formed a friendship with Petrarch, for whom he painted a portrait of Laura, and where in all probability he remained until his death. The stylistic evolution, heralded by the altarpiece of the Uffizi, now becomes precise in a search for dramatic movement and pathetic expression, for which the influence of P. Lorenzetti has often been invoked. With the frescoes of the atrium of the cathedral of Avignon disappeared or reduced to almost illegible fragments (the St. George Liberating the Princess disappeared, of which a description remains; the Madonna and Angels and the Christ Blessing very badly damaged), such characteristics appear only in the dramatic scenes of the Stefaneschi polyptych (dispersed among the Museums of Antwerp, Berlin and the Louvre, signed), in the darting little figures of the Virgilian Allegory in the Ambrosian Codex, in the wrathful Holy Family of the Liverpool Museum (signed and dated 1342), and in the works that are generally ascribed to this period, such as the Annunciata Stroganoff (Leningrad, formerly in Rome), the St. John the Evangelist Bekoff (Paris): the dreamy enchantment has been broken to give place to a lively and agitated reality and, at times, wrathful and convulsed.
Besides those mentioned, the following paintings go under the name of Simone: Altenburg, Lindenau Museum, St. John the Baptist; Avignon, Calvet Museum, two fragments of a fresco that perhaps depicted an Annunciation; Brussels, Stoclet Collection, Christ Blessing, Annunciate Madonna; Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, St. Michael between St. Ambrose and St. Augustine (triptych); Cambridge (USA), Fogg Museum, Crucifix; New York, Metropolitan Museum (formerly in Rome, Sterbini coll.), St. John the Evangelist; Orvieto, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (formerly in S. Francesco), Madonna and Child (central part of a polyptych to which, according to Toesca, the Liechtenstein panel with the St. Catherine is to be joined); Rome, Museo di Palazzo Venezia, Madonna and Child (mostly assigned to Lippo Memmi); S. Casciano, church of the Misericordia, Crucifix; Florence, Settignano, Berenson collection, St. Lucy, St. Mad-
Madalena (pannelli di politico); Siena, Pinacoteca, n. 36, Crocifisso; Siena, Palazzo pubblico, Croce dipinta; Venezia, collezione privata, Redentore (cuspide di politico); Vienna, collezione Liechtenstein, S. Caterina. - Vedi tav. XVII.
Bibliography16 works
Amalia Mezzetti