simone martini early renaissance painter

Simone Martini

1280-1344

Stylistically influenced by the following painters and art styles ; Manuscript Illumination, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Coppo di Marcovaldo, and Duccio di Buoninsegna

Mediums - panel painting, frescoes and manuscript illumination

Cause of Death - plague

Biography

Simon Martini's style was greatly influenced by the frescos of Sienese legend, Ambrogio Lorenzetti. His use of form had a enormously influential effect on the young painters who surrounded him. The prevailing characteristic of Martini's work being rich colour and spatial inventiveness. His figures express raw, unfettered passion--tender emotions that do not feel contrived or abstracted. Both Peasants and Church hierarchy, immediately connected with his lyrical and spiritually rich style. Martini's work is bold, exploratory and intense. He explored in his art a new world of emotion and passion, but with a lyricism and deep sensitivity to color. His subjects, like his predecessors, are all religious – the Virgin Mary, Saints, the Life of Christ,the Apostles, and Angeles. many of his greatest masterpieces (La Maesta and Guidoriccio da Fogliano) are housed in the famous Civic Museum inside the Palazzo Pubblico overlooking the Piazza del Campo. The Palazzo Pubblico was built in the early 1300s by the Government of Nove. It is a masterpiece of medieval urban architecture. In the Great Council Hall there are extraordinary frescoes by Martini depicting a beautiful Maestà and next door, in the Hall of Nine there is the amazing fresco cycle by Ambrogio Lorenzetti showing the Allegory and Effects of Good and Bad Government.

Sienese Painting

While Byzantine art is strict and aloof, Sienese painting possesses a mystic sincerity. It seems as if the stone vaults of the churches had suddenly become transparent, and the eyes gazed upwards towards heaven, where tender ethereal beings, singing and praising the Highest, lived in eternal youth and lovingly gazed down upon mankind. Origen Adamantius, an early Christian theologian stated "If all things were made through Him, clearly so must the splendid revelations have been which were made to the fathers and prophets, and became to them the symbols of the sacred mysteries of religion." Simone Martini discovered in his own art a new world of emotion and passion, but with a new expressiveness and understanding of color.

Until the Middle Ages men regarded themselves as following the Good Shepherd, and art consequently did not recognize the individual in particular. In the structure and position of the figures, as in their expression, a general and uniform type of beauty prevailed. Author Clara Erskine Clement asserts "We cannot say that the art of the Renaissance originated in one city or another, because the movement in the revival of art was so general throughout Italy; but Florence has a strong claim to our first consideration from the fact that Filippo Brunelleschi was a Florentine and did his greatest work in his native city, and on account of it has been called "the father of the Art of the Renaissance."

The early Renaissance marks the victory of individualism and the uncompromising prominence of he individual. Renaissance historian Jacob Burckhardt asserted "Freed from the countless bonds which elsewhere in Europe checked progress, having reached a high degree of individual development and been schooled by the teachings of antiquity, the Italian mind now turned to the discovery of the outward universe, and to the representation of it in speech and form."

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Important Words, People, Phrases, Characteristics related to the Italian Renaissance Art Movement - rebirth, rediscovery of the classical world, City-state, Humanism, Humanist, Francesco Petrarch, Reform, The Prince, Theocracy, The Inquisition, Human Reasoning, Medici Academy, publication of Della Pittura, a book about the laws of mathematical perspective for artists, sfumato, chiaroscuro, linear perspective, Heliocentric Theory, Petrarch, Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, liberal arts, civic humanism, Verrocchio, secularism, Leonardo Bruni, Lorenzo Valla, Neo-Platonism, nominalism, Giotto, Masaccio, Botticelli, Quattrocento, vanishing point, Savonarola, oligarchy spiritually significant, illuminated manuscript, idealized biblical themes, scriptorium, emotion, illuminator, iconoclast, Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci, Age of Discovery, axonometric drawing, curiosity about the natural world, mythology, realistic use of colours and light, Bonfire of the Vanities, Old Testament stories, ethereal and foggy backgrounds, Gospel parables, The Blackdeath, romanticized landscapes, Christian symbolism. Paradise

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