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Ambrogio Lorenzetti
Birth name	Ambrogio Lorenzetti
Born	c. 1285/1290 Siena, Italy
Died	June 9, 1348
Nationality	Italian
Field	Painting, Fresco
Movement	Gothic
Works	Allegory of good government, Allegory of bad government

Good Government in the countryside c. 1328.

Ambrogio Lorenzetti (or Ambruogio Laurati; c. 1290 – June 9, 1348) was an Italian painter of the Sienese school. He was active between approximately 1317 to 1348. His elder brother was the painter Pietro Lorenzetti.

His work shows the influence of Simone Martini, although more naturalistic. The earliest dated work of the Sienese painter is a Madonna and Child (1319, Museo Diocesano, San Casciano). His presence was documented in Florence up until 1321. He would return there after spending a number of years in Siena.^[1]

The frescoes on the walls of the Room of the Nine (Sala dei Nove) or Room of Peace (Sala della Pace) in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena are one of the masterworks of early renaissance secular painting. The "nine" was the oligarchal assembly of guild and monetary interests that governed the republic. Three walls are painted with frescoes consisting of a large assembly of allegorical figures of virtues in the Allegory of Good Government [1]. In the other two facing panels, Ambrogio weaves panoramic visions of Effects of Good Government on Town and Country, and Allegory of Bad Government and its Effects on Town and Country (also called "Ill-governed Town and Country"). The better preserved "well-governed town and country" is an unrivaled pictorial encyclopedia of incidents in a peaceful medieval "borgo" and countryside.

The first evidence of the existence of the hourglass can be found in one of his paintings.

Like his brother, he is believed to have died of bubonic plague 1348. Giorgio Vasari includes a biography of Lorenzetti in his Lives.

Selected works

• Virgin and Child Enthroned (1319)
• San Procolo altarpiece (1332)
• Investiture of St. Louis of Toulouse (1329), fresco at San Francesco, Siena
• Franciscan Martyrdom at Bombay (c. 1336), fresco at San Francesco, Siena
• Santa Petronilla Altarpiece (1340s)

References

Sources

• Bowsky, William M. “The Buon Governo of Siena (1287-1355): A Mediaeval Italian Oligarchy.” Speculum 37(3), Jul. 1962: 368-381.
• Bowsky, William M. “The Medieval Commune and Internal Violence: Police Power and Public Safety in Siena, 1287-1355.” The American Historical Review 73(1), Oct. 1967: 1-17.
• Bowsky, William M. A Medieval Italian Commune; Siena Under The Nine, 1287-1355 (University of California, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).
• Debby, Nirit Ben-Aryeh. “War and Peace: the description of Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Frescoes in Saint Bernardino’s 1425 Siena Sermons.” Renaissance Studies 15(3), 2001: 273-286.
• Feldges-Henning, Uta. “The Pictorial Programme of the Sala della Pace: A New Interpretation.” in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 35, 1972: 145-162.
• Frugoni, Chiara. A Distant City; Images of Urban Experience in the Medieval World (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991).
• Frugoni, Chiara. Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti (Florence, Italy; Scala, Istituto Fotografico Editoriale, 1988).
• Greenstein, Jack M. “The Vision of Peace: Meaning and Representation in Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Sala Della Pace Cityscapes.” Art History 11(4), December 1988: 492-510.
• Norman, Diana. “Pisa, Siena, and the Maremma: a neglected aspect of Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s paintings in the Sala dei Nove.” Renaissance Studies 11(4), 1997: 311-341.
• Polzer, Joseph. “Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s “War and Peace” Murals Revisited: Contributions to the Meaning of the “Good Government Allegory.” Artibus et Historiae 23(45), 2002: 63-105.
• Rubinstein, Nicolai. “Political Ideas in Siense Art: The Frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti and Taddeo di Bartolo in the Palazzo Pubblico.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21, No. 3/4. (Jul.-Dec., 1958): 179-207.
• Skinner, Quentin. “Ambrogio Lorenzetti: The Artist as Political Philosopher.” Malerei und Stadtkuler in der Dantezeit: die Argumentation der Bilder, 1989: 85-103.
• Southard, Edna Carter. The Frescoes in Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico, 1289-1539: Studies in Imagery and Relations to other Communal Palaces in Tuscany (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1979).
• Starn, Randolph. Ambrogio Lorenzetti; The Palazzo Pubblico, Siena (New York: George Braziller, 1994).
• Starn, Randolph. “The Republican Regime of the “Room of Peace” in Siena, 1338-40.” Representations 18, Spring 1987:1-32.

External links

• Ambrogio Lorenzetti at Panopticon Virtual Art Gallery
• Arch 343: Cities in History - Lecture 10: The Uses of Decorum - Lorenzetti's Good and Bad Governement