Pietro Lorenzetti
|
Saint Humility Transports Bricks to the Monastery (c.1341) Oil on wood, 45 x 32 cm Uffizi, Florence. |
Pietro Lorenzetti (or
Pietro Laurati) (c.
1280 -
1348) was a
Sienese painter.
Lorenzetti was active between approximately
1306 and
1345. He was born and died in
Siena. He was influenced by
Giovanni Pisano,
Giotto worked alongside
Simone Martini at Assisi. He and his brother,
Ambrogio Lorenzetti, helped introduce
naturalism into Sienese art. In their artistry work and experiments with three-dimensional and spatial arrangements, they foreshadowed the art of the
Renaissance. Many of his religious works are in churches in
Siena,
Arezzo, and
Assisi. One of his last works (1342) is the "Birth of the Virgin" now in the Museo dell'Opera del
Duomo. His masterwork is a tempera fresco decorations of the lower church of
Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi. There he was responsible for an emotional series of large panels depicting "Crucifixion, Depostion from the Cross, and Entombment'. The massed figures in these scenes shows geometric emotional interactions, unlike many prior scenographic depictions which appeared to be the independent iconic agglomerations, as if independent figures had bee glued on to a surface, with no compelling relationship to one another. The narrative influence of Giotto's frescoes in the Bardi and Peruzzi Chapels in
Santa Croce (Florence) and the
Arena Chapel (
Padua) can be seen in these and other works of the lower church. The Lorenzetti brothers and their contemporary competitor from Florence,
Giotto, but also his followers
Daddi and
Maso Di Banco, seeded the Italian pictorial revolution that extracted figures from the gilded ether of byzantine iconography into pictorial worlds of towns, land, and air. Sienese iconography was generally more mystical and fantastic than the more naturalistic Florentines, and at times, seems to elevate into what appears a modern surrealist landscape.
Giorgio Vasari includes a biography of Lorenzetti in his
Lives.
*
Pietro Lorenzetti at the Art Renewal Center *
Pietro Lorenzetti at the Web Gallery of Art 
