- Pietro Lorenzetti
Pietro Lorenzetti (or Pietro Laurati; c. 1280 - 1348) was an Italian painter, active between approximately 1306 and 1345.
Biography
He was born and died in
Siena . He was influenced byGiovanni Pisano and Giotto, and worked alongsideSimone 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 theRenaissance .Many of his religious works are in churches in
Siena ,Arezzo , andAssisi . One of his last works is the "Nativity of the Virgin "(1342), now in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo. His masterwork is a tempera fresco decoration of the lower church ofBasilica of San Francesco d'Assisi , where he painted a series of large panels depicting "Crucifixion, Deposition from the Cross, and Entombment" with figures displaying emotions, yet the massed figures in these scenes are governed by geometric emotional interactions, unlike many prior scenographic depictions which appeared to be the independent iconic agglomerations, as if independent figures had been 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 followersBernardo Daddi andMaso 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".See also
*
Sienese school External links
* [http://www.artrenewal.org/asp/database/art.asp?aid=2794 Pietro Lorenzetti at the Art Renewal Center]
* [http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/l/lorenzet/pietro/index.html Pietro Lorenzetti at the Web Gallery of Art]
* [http://www.aiwaz.net/gallery/lorenzetti-pietro/gc58 Pietro Lorenzetti at Panopticon Virtual Art Gallery]
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