Simone Martini

Italian artist

• Born: c. 1284
• Birthplace: Siena, Republic of Siena (now in Italy)
• Died: 1344
• Place of death: Avignon, Provence, France

Martini, the first painter to be knighted, expanded on the French Gothic style through his innovative painting techniques and sophisticated use of color, techniques that highlighted, in part, expressivity, emotionality, and three-dimensionality.

Early Life

Simone Martini was born in a section of Siena known as San Egidio. Little is known about his parents, but it is believed that he had a brother, Donato, who was also his student. It is probable that Martini spent the first years of his life in Siena and received his early training in the studio of Duccio di Buoninsegna, the master painter of the city. Yet no record of Martini’s early training has been found, and historians know little of his life before 1315. In that year, Martini produced a masterpiece, the Siena Maestà , a work so advanced in technique and so important politically it was placed in the council chamber of the Palazzo Pubblico (city hall) in Siena that it has fostered an ongoing search for Martini’s apprenticeship works. Art historians suspect that several other works, including Christ Blessing and Saint John the Evangelist, also date from that period.

Other attempts have been made to locate Martini’s presumed lost earlier works by tracing his connection with Duccio. Four years earlier, in 1311, Duccio had painted a Maestà of his own in the cathedral and naturally expected to receive the commission for city hall. Still others, because of the unusual French Gothic style of Martini’s paintings, have sought in vain to find evidence that he spent his early life in France. It is generally agreed that the Italian historian Giorgio Vasari is in error in assigning Martini’s training to the school of Giotto in Siena; Vasari’s claim that Martini was the pupil of his father-in-law Memmo di Filippuccio is also believed to be false.

When Martini was thirty-three, he was invited to the Angevin court of Naples, where he was granted a yearly payment of fifty ounces of gold and where, on July 23, 1317, he was knighted, the first painter in history to be so honored.

Life’s Work

Martini lived at a time when the Byzantine style flourished in Italy under the guidance of the master painters Giotto (of Florence) and Duccio (of Siena). Because Siena and Florence were flourishing cities with rapid economic growth, they became cultural centers as well, attracting writers and artists eager to engage the budding ideals of the Italian Renaissance. Florence, the larger and more progressive city, became a tourist and industrial center. It was known particularly for its modeling and enormous art productivity. Siena, locked deep in the Tuscan hills without natural resources, was not suited for industry but survived on banking and trade. For years, the Sienese were the pope’s bankers, a fact that may have helped Martini establish contacts outside his isolated city. In the world of art , Siena became known for its decorative detail and its daring, innovative style.

The so-called Sienese school, of which Martini was a leading figure, thrived for more than 150 years. Few of the early Sienese paintings survive, but one of the earliest is a dossal dated 1215, heavily wrought with a gold-covered surface, called Blessing Christ and Six Scenes. Then came the work of such well-known artists as Nicola Pisano, Guido da Siena, Giotto, Duccio, Martini, the Lorenzetti brothers (Pietro and Ambrogio), and Barna of Siena. Following this great flourishing of painters, the Siena school became suddenly, mysteriously quiet.

The influence of the two leading painters of the time, Giotto and Duccio, can be seen clearly in Martini’s art. From Giotto, he derived a sort of Gothic freedom; from Duccio, he learned structural technique. Martini’s work represents a rather radical shift from the Greco-Roman-Byzantine style from which all painters were struggling to free themselves (a shift neither of the two other painters could achieve) toward a newly emerging, humanistic style. His art, therefore, is a struggle of its own, an attempt to break loose from the restrictions of the physical canvas into a visual essence of being. He was at the same time trying to wean himself from the power of his early teacher Duccio, straining to achieve an independent, vibrant style.

Martini’s earliest known painting, the great Maestà fresco in the Siena city hall, incorporates both the Gothic and the humanistic. The Gothic style is characterized by greater emphasis on curved lines, the use of nature as subject matter, and a heightening of motion and emotion in art. Martini was able to achieve this style by carving out wider spaces between his objects and by rendering a closer focus on reality. For example, in Duccio’s Maestà the main panel is packed with angels and saints to the point of overcrowding, but Martini’s Maestà loosens up the spacing. Using a blue background, which also gives an impression of open space, Martini pared down the massive throne and set a Gothic queen squarely in the seat under a Gothic canopy, instead of the vague, abstract character used by Duccio. Yet it is in the mastery of the musical lines, its rhythms, its flowing grace, and its light undulations and modulations that Martini’s paintings achieve a distinctive Gothic movement and feeling.

Art historians are somewhat puzzled as to how Martini developed his style. Some critics claim that he obtained his taste for the Gothic and the Oriental from Giotto. Others argue that he analyzed imported cloth, jewelry, furniture, and art in Siena trade centers. Both views are certainly plausible. Because Martini was in such demand from commissions and traveled widely, he gained a broad, empirical, cultural base for his art.

In addition to his Gothic style, Martini is noted for highlighting his paintings in a manner that makes his subjects appear three-dimensional. The effect is the creation of a sensuous outer beauty with an inner mysticism. Such an effect comes partly from his own expansive range of human feeling, partly from the awakening of the period to humanistic sympathies, and partly from his later contact with the Humanist poet Petrarch. The rediscovery of sensibilities and of beauty in life engendered in Martini a search for more responsive artistic subjects. The dolce stil nuovo (sweet new style; used in reference to Dante’s style) was a vital issue of the period, in both the visual and verbal arts, and Martini was at the forefront of the search for a visual language to express it.

As a result of his spreading fame, Martini was summoned to the French Angevin court of Naples to be knighted by King Robert of Anjou. The most noted work attributed to his four-year stay in Naples is the altarpiece showing King Robert being crowned by his brother Louis, who gave up the right to the crown in order to be canonized in 1317. In the Saint Louis of Toulouse painting, he again employs early Gothic forms instead of the heavier Byzantine forms, in this case a truncated gable that recurs in other paintings. This work also introduces, perhaps for the first time in Italy, a five-part predella exhibiting scenes from the life of Saint Louis.

In 1319, Martini moved to Pisa, where he composed the large polyptych for the Dominican church dedicated to Saint Catherine and from there to the small town of Orvieto, where he painted another polyptych for the Dominican order. The inner trefoiled units of these two polyptychs show an interesting evolution of Martini’s style from the Romanesque oval shape in the Pisa work (1319) to the more Gothic ogival shape in the Orvieto work (early 1320’). Here, too, the Christ child, unlike the earlier Byzantine models, stands with curled hair on his mother’s knee, more in the style of Gothic sculpture. Finally, his preference for the clearer and brighter enamel-like colors acts to free up more space than do Duccio’s subdued hues.

In 1321, Martini returned to his home in Siena and repaired his damaged Maestà while composing several other works now lost, including the famous Madonna (1321) for the chapel in the Palazzo Pubblico. During this period, Martini began collaborating with the painter Lippo Memmi. By 1324, the partnership was already close, for in that year Martini married Giovanna, the sister of Lippo Memmi and the daughter of painter Memmo di Filipuccio. According to Petrarch, Martini was not a handsome man, but his wife loved him dearly and remained his companion for the rest of his life.

From 1324 to 1340, Martini is known to have been in and around the three cities of Assisi, Florence, and Siena (all fairly close together). Evidence points to several lost portraits he must have painted of castles and towns under the control of the Sienese. In an eight-year span (from 1328 to 1336), he painted some of his greatest works, including the two best of his career: the large Guidoriccio da Fogliano fresco (1328) and the Annunciation painting (1333) in the Cathedral of Siena, but most of the remaining works are missing. Internal evidence in these later paintings appears to show that his brother-in-law’s conservative style acted as a brake on Martini’s style, since the more creative and energetic Gothic spirit seemed to erupt when Martini worked alone.

Martini is known to have bought a house in Siena in 1340. In that same year, he departed for the French city of Avignon, where he spent the last four years of his life. This city probably appealed to Martini because it was a commercial as well as a religious center of power. While there, Martini formed a close friendship with Petrarch, composing a miniature portrait (now lost) of the famous Laura of Petrarch’s poems, in exchange for which Petrarch immortalized Martini’s name in two sonnets. In addition to the Laura portrait, Martini composed for Petrarch an illuminated title page for one of his manuscripts.

What is most significant about this phase is that Martini was for art what the new literary voices in Italy at the time (Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, Dante) were to literature. Since Martini had more than a passing interest in the freeing of art from the highly Romanesque mannerism, he and Petrarch would have had much in common. Martini’s paintings of the period are more volumetric and palpable, calling for a greater attention to human sensibility.

Significance

It is unclear whether the Black Death ended the Sienese school or the school died of artistic inbreeding resulting in inertia. What is clear is that Martini’s exploitation of the Gothic style at a time when art thirsted for new ideas, his slight traces of Oriental flavor, his freeing of color tones, his vivid figures, and his sensitivity to humanistic values all served to doom the highly stylized Byzantine art and to usher in a more expressive style. Through perspective, color, and design, Martini created new ways to use space, and his approach to realism broke the shackles of the Romanesque style. That he was at the forefront of this striving toward a loftier representation of humankind in all the arts shows both his importance as an artist and his acute awareness of the direction painting needed to go at that time in history.

Martini’s designs and his iconography show a sophisticated artistry far beyond the expectations of fourteenth century theory. His brilliant style was to have a major impact on the history of Italian painting for the next hundred years. His influence can be seen in the full, clear faces depicted in the work of his brother-in-law Lippo Memmi, and other, little-known artists such as Lippo Vanni and Bartolo di Fredi carried on Martini’s tradition in a mediocre fashion. Although the Sienese influence was felt in Hungary, France, and Bohemia, the dazzling styles of Duccio, Martini, and the Lorenzetti brothers eventually died out, except in the works of Barna of Siena, who alone advanced the art beyond that of his predecessors.

Bibliography

Cole, Bruce. Sienese Painting: From Its Origins to the Fifteenth Century. New York: Harper and Row, 1980. Contains excellent, succinct material on Martini. A well-written work, it covers the Sienese school from its beginnings in 1215 to 1450.

Dini, Giuletta Chelazzi, Alessandro Angelini, and Bernardina Sani. Sienese Painting: From Duccio to the Birth of the Baroque. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1998. Surveys the history of painting in Siena from Duccio’s and Martini’s time to the Baroque period. Includes illustrations, some in color, and a bibliography and index.

Moran, Gordan, and M. Mallory. Guido Riccio: A Guide to the Controversy for Tourists, Scholars, Students, Art Librarians. Siena, Italy: Edizioni Notizie d’Arte, 2000. Discusses the ongoing scholarly debate about attributing the famous mural at Palazzo Pubblico to Martini.

Paccagnini, Giovanni. Simone Martini. London: Heinemann, 1957. An excellent, complete work in English on Martini’s life and works. The reproduced prints of paintings are large, and there are generous historical and critical notes. This book is essential to any study of Martini.

Vasari, Giorgio. Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Translated by Gaston Du C. De Vere. 3 vols. New York: Abrams, 1979. Besides legal documents and art prints, this work, originally published in English between 1850 and 1907, is the earliest source of material on Martini’s life. It is the most comprehensive study of Martini prior to the twentieth century, and it provides specific details not gathered from analysis of paintings or from legal documents.

Vavalà, Evelyn Sandberg. Sienese Studies: The Development of the School of Painting of Siena. Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1953. One of the earliest surveys of the Sienese school of painters, this volume begins with the oldest known paintings of Siena and provides a chapter on each of the Sienese artists.

Weigelt, Curt H. Sienese Painting of the Trecento. 1930. Reprint. New York: Hacker Art Books, 1974. One of the better books on the Sienese school of painters. Contains one chapter on Martini and provides much material on the Gothic influence. Includes a bibliography.

White, John. Art and Architecture in Italy, 1250-1400. 3d ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993. This study of the period before and including the early Renaissance provides a chapter on Martini and covers painting, architecture, and sculpture set against a social and historical backdrop. Includes an excellent selection of illustrations of paintings and drawings, an extensive bibliography, and an index.