Simone Martini

Simone Martini is first recorded in 1315, the year he painted the great fresco of the Maestà in the council chamber of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. He worked for the Angevin court of Naples, painting an altarpiece of Saint Louis of Toulouse around 1317, and with his brother-in-law Lippo Memmi signed the Annunciation of 1333 now in the Uffizi. Around 1336 he moved to Avignon, then the seat of the papacy, where he died in 1344.

His painting is marked by elegant, continuous outlines, rich patterned surfaces and an interest in the textures of textiles, metal and skin. The Met’s Saint Andrew, from a portable altarpiece, shows the delicacy of his modelling of a face and hands. In Avignon he became a friend of the poet Petrarch, for whom he illuminated a manuscript of Virgil, and his style contributed to the courtly manner that spread through France in the following decades.