Lorenzetti

Lorenzetti, Pietro and Ambrogio, two brothers, painters of the Sienese school, who were active in the first half of the 14th century. Challenging the stylized Byzantine tradition developed by Duccio di Buoninsegna and Simone Martini, they were the first Sienese painters to adopt the dramatic quality of the Tuscan sculptor Giovanni Pisano and the naturalistic approach of the Florentine painter Giotto. In their experiments with three-dimensional, spatial arrangements, the brothers, particularly Ambrogio, foreshadowed the art of the Renaissance.

Pietro was the more traditional of the two brothers, showing harmony, refinement, and detail but also dramatic emotion. His work includes the altarpiece Madonna and Child with Saints (1320, Santa Maria della Pieve, Arezzo), dramatic frescoes in the lower Church of San Francisco in Assisi, and the calmer, later masterpiece the Birth of the Virgin (c. 1342, Opera del Duomo, Siena).

Ambrogio, more inventive and influential than Pietro, and having a more lifelike style, is best known for the fresco cycles Good Government and Bad Government (1338-1339, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena), remarkable for their depiction of character and of contemporary life in and around Siena. He also painted Presentation in the Temple (1342, Uffizi, Florence) and Annunciation (1344, Pinacoteca, Siena).