1283-1344 Italian Simone Martini Locations He was a major figure in the development of early Italian painting and greatly influenced the development of the International Gothic style. It is thought that Martini was a pupil of Duccio di Buoninsegna, the leading Sienese painter of his time. His brother-in-law was the artist Lippo Memmi. Very little documentation survives regarding Simone's life, and many attributions are debated by art historians. Simone Martini died while in the service of the Papal court at Avignon in 1344. Simone was doubtlessly apprenticed from an early age, as would have been the normal practice. Among his first documented works is the Maest?? 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 fourteenth 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 unsurpassed 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 major works include the Maest?? (1315) in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, St Louis of Toulouse Crowning the King at the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples (1317), the S. Caterina Polyptych in Pisa (1319) and the Annunciation and two Saints at the Uffizi in Florence (1333), as well as frescoes in the Chapel of St. Martin in the lower church of the Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi. Francis Petrarch became friend with Simone while in Avignon, and two of his sonnets make reference to a portrait of Laura de Noves he supposedly painted for the poet.   Related Paintings of Simone Martini :. | Petrach's Virgil, title page | Annunciation with Two Saints and Four Prophets | Christ Discovered in the Temple | St Clare and St Elizabeth of Hungary | The Annunciation with SS.Ansanus and Margaret and Four Prophets |
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Orazio Riminaldi
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George Leslie Hunter
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Ilya Yefimovich Repin
1844-1930 After training with a provincial icon painter and at the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts, he visited France and Italy on an academy scholarship. On his return he began painting subjects from Russian history. In 1873 he achieved international fame with Volga Boatmen, a grim, powerful image that became the model for Soviet Socialist Realism. Among his best-known works is Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan (1895), depicting Ivan's murder of his son. He also painted vigorous portraits (including Leo Tolstoy and Modest Mussorgsky). In 1894 he became professor of historical painting at the St. Petersburg Academy.