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Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti

 

Lorenzetti Brothers

Lorenzetti - italian family of painters. Two members of this Sienese family, the brothers Pietro Lorenzetti and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, were artists. While Ghiberti regarded Ambrogio as the greatest of Sienese 14th-century painters, he was apparently unaware of Pietro’s existence. Vasari, who misread the inscription on a panel of the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Angels (Florence, Uffizi) as PETRUS LAURATI DE SENIS, did not recognize Pietro’s connection with Ambrogio. The fraternal relationship was specified, however, in a lost inscription below frescoes on the façade of the hospital of S Maria della Scala, Siena, first recorded by Ugurieri-Azzolini: HOC OPUS FECIT PETRUS LAURENTII ET AMBROSIUS EIUS FRATER M.CCC.XXX.V. There is also evidence that the brothers borrowed tools from each other, although it is unlikely that they collaborated regularly or that they maintained a joint workshop over any lengthy period. There is no doubt that they shared artistic ideas and ambitions, not so much as a result of their family connection, but because they were both major masters and exponents of naturalism. Both painters’ innovations were too radical to be assimilated by their immediate followers, but they foreshadow developments in the 15th century.

See also COLLECTION:  Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti

Pietro Lorenzetti

( fl c. 1306–45)

Although deeply indebted to the art of Duccio and his circle and inclined to be retrospective, he was an artist of considerable originality: his naturalistic figures, influenced by sculpture, are imbued with intense emotions and set within innovative illusionistic space.

Documents referring to Pietro and his works are comparatively scant. It is not certain whether he is identifiable with a ‘Petruccio Lorenzo’ who, on 25 February 1306, was paid 1 lira and 10 soldi for a picture on a ‘panel’ of the nine governors of Siena. Although Pietro’s earliest surviving works date to the second decade of the 14th century, the course of his career suggests that he was an independent master by the first decade. A single panel of the Virgin and Child (on dep. Siena, Pin. N.) from Castiglione d’Orcia (Siena) is the earliest surviving work attributed to him and is technically unusual in that the image was painted on a silver ground. The composition is a modification of a type current in Duccio’s circle. A dismembered polyptych from SS Leonardo e Cristoforo in Monticchiello (Pienza), composed of a half-length Virgin and Child (in situ), a St Margaret (Le Mans, Mus. Tesse) and St Benedict, St Catherine of Alexandria and St Agnes (Florence, Mus. Horne), similarly dates to c. 1315.

Pietro Lorenzetti
Madonna Enthroned with Angels
1340
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Pietro Lorenzetti
Adoration of the Magi
c. 1340
Musee du Louvre, Paris
 

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COLLECTION: Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti
 

Ambrogio Lorenzetti

( fl c. 1317; d before May 1348)

Brother of Pietro Lorenzetti. Ghiberti styled Ambrogio a ‘most perfect’ and learned master. He was certainly the most inventive Sienese artist of the early 14th century. Many of his innovations in naturalism are without parallel; many of his works are characterized by iconography that is equally original. His lost ‘Roman stories’ from the exterior of the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena, suggest an ability to deal with highly unusual subject matter; the lost Mappamondo, an ability to create new forms. His career is marked by periodic shifts and a constant search for innovation: works of the 1310s and 1320s display a pursuit of naturalism that recurred throughout his career; those from the early 1330s suggest that the artist was seeking to emulate the decorative effects of Simone Martini and his circle; in Ambrogio’s late work much of this ornament disappears, or is severely restrained, while his distinctive use of inscribed banderoles implies the desire to push content beyond the traditional pictorial means of monumental painting.

AMBROGIO LORENZETTI:

"THE EFFECTS OF GOOD AND BAD GOVERNMENT IN THE COUNTRY"

Circa 1337-39, Sala del Nove. Palazzo Pitbblico, Siena

This large fresco was painted by the most "Florentine" in style of the two Lorenzetti brothers, following his commission by the Republic. It is the most important secular fresco cycle of the 13th century in Italy, full of political and literary allegories. Here, we see a detail of the countryside from the right-hand side of the fresco. It shows the ''effects of good government" in the country and depicts daily routines, such as farming, fishing, and hunting. The other side of the picture, not shown, represents the city, based on Siena, which in the 12th century had waned in power yet remained one of the major artistic centres in Europe.

Ambrogio Lorenzetti,
The Effects of Good and Bad Government in the Town,
1337-39.
Palazzo Pubblico, Siena

Ambrogio Lorenzetti,
The Effects of Good and Bad Government in the Town (detail), 1337-39.
Palazzo Pubblico, Siena
 

Ambrogio Lorenzetti,
The Effects of Good and Bad Government in the Town (detail), 1337-39.
Palazzo Pubblico, Siena

After Giovanni Balduccio, St Ambrose Offering the City of Milan to the Virgin,
 mid-14th century.
Civic Collection of Ancient Art, Milan

THE CITY

The Effects of Good and Bad Government in the Town and in the Country (1337-39), painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti for the Sala dei Nove in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, shows in a broad, flowing manner that which, more synthetically, is the meaning of the statue from a door in Milan, of Saint Ambrose Offering the City of Milan to the Virgin. The same urban focus of the two works — one representing the point of communication between the city and the world outside, and the other representing civic responsibility — has a clear symbolic meaning of the relationship between Christian virtue and orderly society. As bishop of Milan in the 14th century, St Ambrose  stood out against the emperor and imposed civic moral order.
        

Ambrogio Lorenzetti,
The Effects of Good and Bad Government in the Town (detail), 1337-39.
Palazzo Pubblico, Siena

Ambrogio Lorenzetti,
Altarpiece of St Proculus
1332
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
 

See also COLLECTION: Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti