The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (447 page)

(1621–91).
French etcher, the best-known member of a family of artists active from the 16th to the 18th cent. He worked much for Louis XIII and was drawing-master to Louis XIV. His etchings of architectural subjects and of ceremonies and fêtes are generally considered more valuable as historical records than as works of art.

 
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(
c.
1285–1344).
Next to
Duccio
, the most distinguished painter of the Sienese School. He was probably trained in Duccio's circle, and he developed further the decorative use of outline, colour, and patterning that were the marks of Duccio's work. The main features of his style are present in his earliest surviving work, the large fresco of the
Maestà
(1315; reworked 1321) in Siena Town Hall: the sumptuous materials and the aloofness of the Madonna derive from the
Byzantine
style of the older generation; the decorative line, gesture, and expression are informed by the gracious
Gothic
fashion that was now current in Siena; and the use of foreshortening to create depth shows the awakening desire for more lifelike effects. In 1317 Simone was in Naples, where he executed for Robert of Anjou (king of Naples, 1309–43) a painting (Museo di Capodimonte, Naples) showing his elder brother St Louis of Toulouse, newly canonized, resigning his crown to him. The
predella
scenes of this altarpiece contain the boldest compositions in
perspective
that had been produced up to that date. The next major work associated with Simone is a fresco, dated 1328, on the wall opposite his
Maestà
in Siena Town Hall, commemorating the
condottiere
Guidoriccio da Fogliano, who in that year had won a great victory for the Sienese and liberated the towns of Montemassi and Sassoforte, shown in the background. This highly original work, which shows the general riding in stately but solitary triumph, is generally regarded as one of the first equestrian portraits since antiquity; however, since the late 1970s it has been the subject of great controversy, some scholars considering that it is not by Simone and appreciably later than assumed (this opinion is based on technical evidence allegedly showing that part of the fresco lies on top of another fresco known to date from 1363). The work that is generally regarded as the epitome of Simone's style is the
Annunciation
(Uffizi, Florence, 1333), although this is jointly signed with his brother-in-law Lippo
Memmi
. It is a ravishing blend of fragile grace and sweet sentiment and for sheer beauty of craftsmanship is unsurpassed in its age. Simone's work is more fully Gothic in spirit than that of any other major Italian painter and it is not surprising that he was appreciated in France. In 1340/1 he went to Avignon to serve the papal court, where he painted the unusual subject
Christ Reproved by his Parents
(Walker Art Gal., Liverpool, 1342) and the frontispiece to a Virgil manuscript belonging to the poet Petrarch (Ambrosiana Lib., Milan). He also did a portrait of Petrarch's beloved Laura; it is lost, but mentioned in one of the poet's sonnets. Simone's style and compositions were taken over by
illuminators
from France and Flanders and generations of Italian
panel
and fresco painters copied him too. He was one of the main sources of the
International Gothic
style.

 
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singerie
.

A depiction of monkeys (French: singes) engaged in playful activities, often dressed in human clothes and acting out human roles. The conceit of monkeys involved in human occupations goes back to medieval manuscripts, but the term
singerie
is usually restricted to a type of decorative painting associated with the French
Rococo
. Claude
Audran
and his pupil
Watteau
were noted exponents.

 
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sinopia
.

Term applied to a reddish-brown chalk used for the underdrawing of a
fresco
and also to the drawing itself. Sinopie are often uncovered during restoration work when the upper layer of a fresco is removed (see, for example,
TRAINI
).

 
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(1896–1974).
Mexican painter, one of the trio of muralists (with
Orozco
and
Rivera
) who have dominated 20th-cent. Mexican art. He was a political activist from his youth and in 1914 abandoned his studies at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City to join the revolutionary army fighting against President Huerta. His services were appreciated by the victorious General Carranza, who in 1919 sponsored him to continue his studies in Europe, where he was friendly with Rivera (later they became rivals). On returning to Mexico in 1922 he took a leading part in the artistic revival fostered by President Alvaro Obregón . Siqueiros was active in organizing the Syndicate of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors and was partly responsible for drafting its manifesto, which set forth the idealistic aims of the revolutionary artists: ‘our own aesthetic aim is to socialize artistic expression, to destroy bourgeois individualism… We proclaim that this being the moment of social transition from a decrepit to a new order, the makers of beauty must invest their greatest efforts in the aim of materializing an art valuable to the people, and our supreme object in art, which today is an expression for individual pleasure, is to create beauty for all, beauty that enlightens and stirs to struggle.’
Siqueiros's political activities led to his imprisonment or self-imposed exile several times; from 1925 to 1930 he completely abandoned painting for political activity and he later fought in the Spanish Civil War. It was not until 1939 that he eventually completed a mural in Mexico—
Portrait of the Bourgeoisie
for the headquarters of the Union of Electricians in Mexico City (his slow start had prompted Rivera to retort in answer to criticism from him: ‘Siqueiros talks: Rivera paints!’). Thereafter, however, Siqueiros's output was prodigious. He painted many easel pictures as well as murals, and though he insisted they were subordinate to his wall paintings, they were important in helping to establish his international reputation. His murals are generally more spectacular even than those of Orozco and Rivera—bold in composition, striking in colour, freely mixing realism with fantasy, and expressing a raw emotional power. In contrast with the sense of disillusionment and foreboding sometimes seen in Orozco's work, Siqueiros always expressed the dynamic urge to struggle; his work can be vulgar and bombastic, but its sheer energy is astonishing. He often experimented technically—working on curved surfaces and using air-brushes and synthetic pigments—and his last major work, the Polyforum Siqueiros in Mexico City (completed 1971), is a huge auditorium integrating architecture, sculpture, and painting. In his late years Siqueiros was showered with honours from his own country and elsewhere; he received the Lenin Peace Prize in 1967, for example, and in the following year became the first President of the newly founded Mexican Academy of Arts.