1283-1344 Italian Simone Martini Locations He was a major figure in the development of early Italian painting and greatly influenced the development of the International Gothic style. It is thought that Martini was a pupil of Duccio di Buoninsegna, the leading Sienese painter of his time. His brother-in-law was the artist Lippo Memmi. Very little documentation survives regarding Simone's life, and many attributions are debated by art historians. Simone Martini died while in the service of the Papal court at Avignon in 1344. Simone was doubtlessly apprenticed from an early age, as would have been the normal practice. Among his first documented works is the Maest?? of 1315 in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. A copy of the work, executed shortly thereafter by Lippo Memmi in San Gimignano, testifies to the enduring influence Simone's prototypes would have on other artists throughout the fourteenth century. Perpetuating the Sienese tradition, Simone's style contrasted with the sobriety and monumentality of Florentine art, and is noted for its soft, stylized, decorative features, sinuosity of line, and unsurpassed courtly elegance. Simone's art owes much to French manuscript illumination and ivory carving: examples of such art were brought to Siena in the fourteenth century by means of the Via Francigena, a main pilgrimage and trade route from Northern Europe to Rome. Simone's major works include the Maest?? (1315) in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, St Louis of Toulouse Crowning the King at the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples (1317), the S. Caterina Polyptych in Pisa (1319) and the Annunciation and two Saints at the Uffizi in Florence (1333), as well as frescoes in the Chapel of St. Martin in the lower church of the Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi. Francis Petrarch became friend with Simone while in Avignon, and two of his sonnets make reference to a portrait of Laura de Noves he supposedly painted for the poet.   Related Paintings of Simone Martini :. | The Road to Calvary (mk08) | The Angel of the Annunciation | detail depicting Saint Clare of Assisi from a fresco in the Lower basilica of San Francesco | Museums national scenes out of life the Hl. Bertim | Petrach's Virgil |
Related Artists:
COLLANTES, Francisco
Spanish Baroque Era Painter, 1599-1656 Spanish painter. He was probably a pupil of Vicente Carducho, but there is nothing to support this idea. His evident familiarity with contemporary Italian art indicates that he visited Rome and Naples, and this might explain the absence of documentation on him in Spain. Collantes enjoyed considerable prestige, and his paintings were acquired in 1634 for the decoration of the Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid; some of them may have been specially painted for this setting. His name appears frequently in the inventories of collectors in Madrid throughout the 17th century. It is impossible to date Collantes's undated paintings with any accuracy. However, his work shows two very clear and different lines of development. His canvases of large, intensely naturalistic figures, with tenebrist lighting effects , are close in style to those of Jusepe Ribera. In them the intense, energetic figures are sometimes set against landscape backgrounds, for example in St Humphrey (1645-50; Madrid, Prado) and St John the Baptist , but, still following Ribera, the naturalistic elements are emphasized. He also specialized in landscapes and in biblical or mythological subjects, compositions with minute figures set against wide landscapes or architecture with strong light effects. These are the works for which he is best known and which are the most important, since he was one of the few landscape painters in Spain in the 17th century.
James Latham
James Latham (c. 1696 - 26 January 1747) was an Irish portrait painter. James Latham was born in Thurles, County Tipperary, Ireland and possibly related to the family of Lathams of Meldrum and Ballysheehan. After some practice of his art, Latham studied for an academic year in Antwerp (1724 - 25) where he became a Master of the Guild of St Luke. He returned to Dublin by 1725, and may have visited England in the 1740s, as the influence of Joseph Highmore, as well as Charles Jervas and William Hogarth, is evident in his work of this period. Anthony Pasquin memorably dubbed Latham "Ireland's Van Dyck". Latham died in Dublin on 26 January 1747. Several of James Latham's portraits are in the National Gallery of Ireland collection in Dublin; one is of the famous MP Charles Tottenham (1694-1758) of New Ross, Co. Wexford, "Tottenham in his Boots" (Cat. No.411) and a second is a portrait of Bishop Robert Clayton (1697-1758) and his wife Katherine.
WIERINGEN, Cornelis Claesz van
Dutch painter (b. ca. 1580, Haarlem, d. 1633, Haarlem) Dutch draughtsman, painter, etcher and navigator. His name first appears in the Haarlem records in 1597. It is generally assumed that he was a pupil of Hendrick Vroom, whose work strongly influenced his own. Documentary sources confirm that he maintained close friendships with both Hendrick Goltzius, who made woodcuts after his drawings (see fig.), and Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem. Van Wieringen was more than once governor of the Haarlem Guild of St Luke, a position in which he was responsible for updating the guild's outmoded organization. He specialized in seascapes and received commissions from the city of Haarlem, the Dutch Admiralty in Amsterdam and others. His interest lies primarily in his influence on Dutch marine painters of the 17th century.