About the year 1325,[[20]] we may surmise, Simone was called to Assisi to fresco the Chapel of St. Martin in the Lower Church. He set upon the walls so many fairy tales, tender and sprightly in sentiment, provided with the few essential accessories that a rapid story-teller would need. What more charming than the boy Martin praying while they bind on him the equipment of a knight, Figure [43], and musicians sound a fanfare! What more gallant than the lad setting out on crusade against the Teutons who lurk in a cleft of the background! This gracious childlike quality, quite akin to the tender phase of Duccio, is exceptional in Simone, who habitually is the strenuous decorator.
His sparse and austere methods appear clearly in the commemorative fresco of Guidoriccio, hired general of Siena, and conqueror of Sassoforte. It is in the Palazzo Pubblico and duly dated 1328. Nothing is realistic but the horse and rider. They are isolated, hold alone a field made up of pure symbols for camps, and fortresses and craggy hill-tops, yet the martial effect is unmistakable and the composition most quaintly impressive.
The quintessence of Simone’s later art is in the famous Annunciation of the Uffizi, Figure [44]. In order to justify the most nervously exquisite of linear arrangements he has chosen the least significant moment of the event. His Virgin is merely a sullen princess resenting an intrusion; the Gabriel, an etherialized courtier pleading a cause with apologies. But the contrast of the advancing and shrinking motives gave Simone precisely what he wanted. He builds up areas richly colored or brocaded, bounded by sharp curves, relieved by flutters and spirals of flying drapery, and accentuated by such details as the olive twigs and the lily which have the crisp incisiveness of finest metal work. As a triumph of pure decoration Gothic painting has nothing better to show than this lovely panel which was finished in 1333 for the chapel of Sant’ Ansano at Siena. It has little quality of heart in it, and no reverence save that of consummate workmanship.
Great honors awaited Simone. He was called to the exiled papal court at Avignon in 1339, met Petrarch, painted Petrarch’s Laura and is lauded in one of the poet’s sonnets. Of Simone’s work at Avignon we have only a few small panels scattered between Antwerp, Paris, Liverpool, and Berlin. The compositions, most of which belonged to a composite altar-piece depicting Christ’s passion, waver between his old simple style and a crowded and animated mood reminiscent of Duccio, and influenced by the Lorenzetti. Simone is unable to resist the universal tendency towards diffuse narrative, and in so far as he yields to it, he is less than himself. Christ Bearing His Cross, in the Louvre, exemplifies the extravagance and morbidness of this latest manner, Figure [45]. His strength lies in sacrifice and abstraction, his real affinities are the contemporary Buddhist painters of China and Japan, though of course he knew nothing of them. He died in 1344, leaving behind him a tradition of fastidious artistry which was potent in Siena for over a century.
Fig. 45. Simone Martini. Christ bearing His Cross.—Louvre.
As late as 1450, Lorenzo Ghiberti informs us in his “Commentaries,”[[21]] the Sienese regarded Simone Martini as their greatest painter. He differed from them, preferring, himself, Ambrogio Lorenzetti. This was an eminently Florentine choice, Ambrogio’s warmth, concreteness, and elaboration were on the whole Florentine. He worked for several years at Florence, must have known Giotto, certainly studied him with discerning admiration. With his elder brother, Pietro, Ambrogio Lorenzetti gave to Duccio’s tradition of detailed narrative painting its perfected form. They were great fresco painters, and most characteristic as such. In panel painting they are less original, but they bring into this highly conventional art a great ardor and curiosity. They represent the popular average of Siena as Simone Martini represented its aristocratic minority.
Fig. 46. Pietro Lorenzetti. Madonna with Saints, 1320.—Pieve, Arezzo.
We first meet Pietro Lorenzetti as an artist in the altar-back at the Pieve, Arezzo,[[22]] Figure [46], which was finished in 1320. It is an ancona, or compartmented piece and the most splendid that has come down in Romanesque form. The figures are of two sorts. The Madonna is of intent Gothic type, and the fine motive of holding off the Christchild at elbow length in order to see him better is borrowed from Giovanni Pisano, who in turn took it from French Gothic sculpture. So are the forms above in the Annunciation new and graceful, while the little boxed room with its plastic column is also novel. The Assumption of the Madonna in the highest pinnacle is probably the earliest occurrence of this famous Sienese theme in painting. But all the figures of saints in the three orders of the side panels are taken almost without change from Duccio’s great altar-piece. It would be interesting to trace Pietro’s emancipation through a dozen panels. No one better combined dignity with grace, and feeling, and splendor. His work in fresco is fragmentary and confused with that of his younger brother. We are certain of nothing except a fragment of a deeply felt Calvary in the Church of St. Francesco, at Siena. Many critics ascribe to him the agitated and wildly picturesque frescoes of the Passion in the left transept of the Lower Church at Assisi.[[23]] But this, I think, is a mistake. Pietro is never in his certain works so lively and indecorous and casual. We have to do with an artist influenced by Duccio working about 1330, Pietro himself may appear as the Stigmatization, Figure [47], and one or two of the other simpler compositions. The other frescoes are chiefly interesting as showing the dangers of the panoramic method of Siena. Take the Last Supper, Figure [48]. The theme is simply lost in the fantastic richness of the accessories. It is hard to find Christ or Judas, for the eye seeks the radiating rafters or the scullery where cats lurk and eager scullions wipe the dishes.