Description

Madonna and Child by Silvia Salvadori. Art Workshop of Silvia Salvadori - Arezzo. Medieval painted boards. Work drawn from: Pietro Lorenzetti, 14th century. Technique: tempera and gold on wood. ART REPRODUCTION by Silvia Salvadori. Icon of the Madonna and Child painted in tempera and pure gold on an ancient table according to the ancient recipes of the Sienese school. Icon. Madonna and Child, art reproduction by Pietro Lorenzetti. Medieval art. Polyptych of the Pieve di Santa Maria, Arezzo. Pietro Lorenzetti (Siena, ca. 1280/85 - ca. 1348) was an Italian painter of the fourteenth century, one of the painters of the Sienese painting school. He was the older brother of Ambrogio Lorenzetti. His training had to take place under Duccio di Buoninsegna, with the same age as Simone Martini. From 1310 to 1320 he participated in the large decorative construction site of the Lower Basilica of Assisi, with Simone Martini and other Florentine painters from Giotto's school; in particular he worked in the south transept in the service of Cardinal Napoleone Orsini, frescoing scenes from the Passion of Christ, in which he demonstrated that he had developed an autonomous figurative language that synthesized Sienese art and Giotto's language. For example, the scene of the Last Supper is emblematic, built around a table beneath a magnificent hexagonal loggia (which is very reminiscent of the structure of the pulpit of the Cathedral of Siena by Nicola Pisano), where the assimilation of perspective techniques is demonstrated for the virtuous architectural settings derived from Giotto; but even more surprising is the vision of the narrow room of the servants on the left: a quarter of the surface of the fresco is in fact occupied by the adjacent kitchen, where food is boiling over a hearth and two servants clean the dishes and throw the leftovers; in the background you can recognize details of the furniture (a coal shovel and shelves with dishes) and in the foreground we find a cat that warms itself by the fire and a dog that licks the leftover food from the dishes. No Giotto follower would probably have considered a detail worthy of "low" as it is everyday, while Pietro Lorenzetti's curiosity appears to be lit by this meticulous detail, by the precise description of reality. The polyptych of the Madonna della Pieve of Arezzo from 1320 is the first dated work to date. Pietro Lorenzetti later went to Siena, where in 1329 he painted the great icon of the Madonna and Child, San Nicola di Bari, Elia and Angeli or Pala del Carmine, as it is still preserved in the Sienese church of Carmine. The Madonna is seated on the throne, in a solemn plasticity reminiscent of Giotto's Madonna di Ognissanti, especially in the full-bodied shades of the face. Of this work is also interesting the tablet with the fountain of the prophet Elijah, part of the predella, in which he is a Carmelite who draws water with a jug. Pietro Lorenzetti's sensitivity for the material quality of the natural elements and for their optical effects is made evident by the rippling of the water surface of the tank due to the splashing effect and by the reflections on the glass bowls resting on the edge of the fountain. Also in Siena, together with his brother Ambrogio Lorenzetti, he painted the now lost frescoes on the facade of the Hospital of Santa Maria alla Scala in 1335. In more mature works he appears influenced by his brother Ambrogio Lorenzetti, where the most Florentine Giottoism is diluted in naturalistic and luministic research. For example, in the triptych of 1342 for the cathedral of Siena, intended to decorate the altar of San Savino, he represented the Nativity of the Virgin on three panels treating them as if it were one, indeed treating the demarcations as if they were the pillars that separate the room in three rooms, two of which belong to the main room and one, on the left, where Joachim, Maria's father, is anxiously waiting. The painted vaults are illusionistically placed on the "pillars" of the frame and their perspective follows a precise system of orthogonal planes also in depth (see for example the breakthrough on a porticoed courtyard on the left), which present angles very close to those of the true perspective Unified vanishing point geometry prepared only by Brunelleschi at the beginning of the 15th century. The domestic interior, however, is not reduced to a cold architectural structure, on the contrary the figures move at ease and the details of furniture and furnishings are well-kept, from the floor tiles to the little stars painted on the cross vaults. This is also the last documented work by Pietro Lorenzetti, of which there is no more news after 1347: it is probable that he died during the plague of 1348.