Simone Martini (c. 1284–1344)

Italian painter. A master of the Sienese school, he was a pupil of Duccio and continued the bright colours and graceful linear patterns of Sienese painting while introducing a fresh element of naturalism. Among his most important works are the Maestà (1315) in the Town Hall of Siena and the Annunciation (1333; Uffizi, Florence).

His patrons included the city of Siena, the king of Naples, and the pope. Two of his frescoes are in the Town Hall in Siena: the Maestà and a portrait (on horseback) of the local hero Guidoriccio da Fogliano. Sometime in the 1320s or 1330s Simone worked at Assisi where he decorated the chapel of St Martin with scenes depicting the life of the saint. He also worked in Avignon.

French Gothic art and the Gothic element in the sculpture of the Pisani contributed to give his art a new direction, dominant in Siena for the following two centuries. A link with France and court life was first established by his visit to Naples 1317, where he painted for Robert of Anjou his altarpiece in the church of San Lorenzo, showing St Louis crowning Robert, King of Naples. In 1339 he went on public business to Avignon and remained in that centre of an exiled papacy and a chivalric culture for the rest of his life. There he was the friend of Petrarch and painted a portrait (now lost) of Petrarch's Laura and illustrated a Virgil codex for the poet, now in Milan. In Avignon he exerted a great influence on French art and the development of an International Gothic style. An interesting signed and dated work of the Avignon period is Christ returning to His Parents after disputing with the Doctors 1342 (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool), and an important product of his studio is the polyptych (three panels of Sts Ambrose, Michael, and Augustine) in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England.