Olga's Gallery

Simone’s projected date of birth is based on a 16th-century source, but may well be accurate, even though the date of his first signed work, the fresco of the Maestà in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, is a relatively late 1316. The stylistic diversity of his works is so wide that it has proved impossible so far to table their chronology. It is not inconceivable, for example, that the Maestà in Siena, the devotional panels comprising the Orsini Polyptych, (The Annunciation, The Road to Calvary, The Crucifixion, The Deposition, The Entombment), and the altarpieces in an old fashioned style which he executed for Pisa and Orvieto, are all in fact contemporaneous. Read Simone Martini's Full Biography