シモーネ・マルティーニ

1284-1344 Italian

優美な国際ゴシック様式の先駆者

シモーネ・マルティーニはシエナ生まれのイタリア人画家です。彼は初期イタリア絵画の発展における主要な人物であり、国際ゴシック様式の発展に大きな影響を与えました。 マルティーニは、当時のシエナ派を代表する画家ドゥッチョ・ディ・ブオニンセーニャの弟子であったと考えられている。ルネサンス後期の芸術伝記作家ジョルジョ・ヴァザーリによれば、シモーネはむしろジョット・ディ・ボンドーネの弟子であり、ジョットと共にローマへ赴き、旧サン・ピエトロ大聖堂で制作を行い、ジョットもそこでモザイク画を制作した。マルティーニの義兄弟は画家のリップ・メンミである。シモーネの生涯に関する史料はほとんど残っておらず、多くの作品の帰属については美術史家の間で議論がある。E.H.ゴンブリッチによれば、彼はペトラルカの友人であり、ラウラの肖像画を描いたという。 Simone was doubtlessly apprenticed from an early age, as would have been the normal practice. Among his first documented works is the Maestà 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 14th 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 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 other major works include the Saint Louis of Toulouse Crowning His Brother Robert of Anjou (1317, now Museo di Capodimonte, Naples); this work was painted during a stay in Naples at the request of the king. During this stay, putative pupils were his son Francesco, Gennaro di Cola, and Stefanone. Among other of Simone’s works, he also painted the Saint Catherine of Alexandria Polyptych in Pisa (1319) and the Annunciation with St. Margaret and St. Ansanus at the Uffizi in Florence (1333), as well as frescoes in the San Martino Chapel in the lower church of the Basilica of San Francesco d’Assisi. Francis Petrarch became a friend of Simone’s while in Avignon, and two of Petrarch’s sonnets (Canzoniere 96 and 130) make reference to a portrait of Laura de Noves that Simone supposedly painted for the poet (according to Vasari). A Christ Discovered in the Temple (1342) is in the collections of Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery. Simone Martini died while in the service of the Papal court at Avignon in 1344.