The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (281 page)

 
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(
c.
1490–
c.
1550).
Portuguese painter, court painter to Manuel I and John III. Among Portuguese painters of his period he was the most directly inspired by
Renaissance
influence. His work is represented in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.

 
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(1772–1850).
Spanish painter. Primarily a portraitist, he was influenced by
Mengs
, whose style he continued into the 19th cent. In 1815 he became first court painter to Ferdinand VII (who preferred him to
Goya
), in 1817 director of the Academia of San Fernando, and in 1823 director of the
Prado
.

 
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Lorenzetti , Pietro
(active 1320–48) and
Ambrogio

(active 1319–48).
Sienese painters, brothers. They were among the outstanding Italian artists of their time, but their lives are poorly documented—both are assumed to have died in the Black Death of 1348. Pietro is usually said to have been the elder brother, but the evidence is not conclusive. His first dated work is of 1320–a
polyptych
of
The Virgin and Child with Saints
in the Pieve di Sta Maria at Arezzo; Ambrogio's earliest reliably attibuted work is of a year earlier—a
Virgin and Child
for a church at Vico I'Abate (Museo Diocesano, Florence). Apart from collaborating in a cycle on the
Life of Mary
, which they painted in fresco on the façade of Siena's public hospital in 1335 (now lost), the brothers worked independently. They shared a certain affinity of style, however, the weightiness of their figures showing the influence of
Giotto
and clearly setting them apart from the elegance of their greatest Sienese contemporary,
Simone Martini
. Ambrogio was the more innovative of the brothers, and his greatest work, the fresco series representing
Good and Bad Government
in the Town Hall at Siena (1338–9), is one of the most remarkable achievements in 14th-cent. Italian art. In it he broke new ground in the naturalistic painting of landscape and townscape, and the talkative crowds of figures show he was an acute observer of his fellow men. Ambrogio's other dated work includes altarpieces of
The Presentation in the Temple
(Uffizi, Florence, 1342) and
The Annunciation
(Pinacoteca, Siena, 1344). Pietro's work is noted for its emotional expressiveness, his fresco of
The Descent from the Cross
in the Lower Church of S. Francesco at Assisi having remarkable pathos and dramatic power. The extent and the date of Pietro's contribution at Assisi are matters of controversy, but his other work includes dated altarpieces of
The Virgin and Child Enthroned
(Uffizi, 1340) and
The Birth of the Virgin
(Cathedral Museum, Siena, 1342).

 
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(
c.
1370–
c.
1425).
Italian painter. He was born in Siena, but seems to have spent all his professional life in Florence. In 1391 he took his vows as a monk of the Camaldolese monastery of Sta Maria degli Angeli. He rose to the rank of deacon, but in 1402 he was enrolled in the painters' guild under his lay name, Piero di Giovanni (Lorenzo Monaco means ‘Laurence the Monk’), and was living outside the monastery. The monastery was renowned for its manuscript
illuminations
and several
miniatures
in books in the Laurentian Library in Florence have been attributed to him, but he was primarily a painter of altarpieces, good examples of which are in the National Gallery in London and the Uffizi in Florence. His main works in fresco are the scenes of the
Life of Mary
in the Bartolini chapel of Sta Trinità, Florence. His style is distinguished by luminous beauty of colouring and a graceful, rhythmic flow of line. He stands in complete contrast to his great contemporary
Masaccio
and represents the highest achievement of the last flowering of
Gothic
art in Florence.

 
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