A history of Italian painting

by Frank Jewett Mather

Fulfil your honorable requests.

But if the powerful molest the weak,

Oppressing whether with shame or harm—

Let not your prayers be made for these

Nor for whomsoever betrays my city.”

Fig. 43. Simone Martini. St. Martin Knighted.—Lower Church, Assisi.

In Simone’s work this great Majesty is an exception. He preferred generally to work on a more restricted scale, to burn the lamp of æsthetic sacrifice. I can merely allude to the great idealized portrait of St. Louis of Toulouse, in S. Lorenzo, Naples. It was painted for King Robert of Anjou, whose kneeling figure appears in the picture, sometime after 1317. The thing is resplendent in gold and azure, adorned by curiously twisted Gothic borders; in sentiment it is impassive as a Buddhist painting.

Fig. 44. Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi. The Annunciation.—Uffizi.