Simone Martini was one of the greatest painters of the fourteenth century. During his artistic training, he may have spent some time in the workshop of Duccio di Buoninsegna, assisting with the completion of Duccio’s monumental altarpiece, known as the Maestà, commissioned for the high altar of Siena Cathedral and completed in 1311. He appears to have soon after started to work as an independent master. In around 1312 he began a monumental fresco, depicting the Virgin and Child enthroned and surrounded by the company of heaven, for the headquarters of Siena’s government, the Palazzo Pubblico. Completed 1315, Simone later returned to this fresco, making significance changes to his earlier design.
Following a period spent in Assisi, painting a cycle of frescoes in a chapel dedicated to Saint Martin, at the Lower Church of the Basilica of San Francesco (about 1315–17), Simone established himself as the leading painter of Siena. He assumed a number of prestigious commissions for the city government and major religious and charitable institutions, including the cathedral and the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala. In collaboration with his brother-in-law, Lippo Memmi, with whom he ran a workshop, his compositions retained a persuasive influence over following generations of Sienese painters.
Sometime during the mid-1330s, Simone left Siena and moved to Avignon where the papal court was then based. Here he continued to work, on both public and private commissions, painting for the papal curia and for the city’s churches and monastic houses. He died in the city in 1344.
