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| Ugolino di Nerio |
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| Painter |
| Siena, informatio from 1317 to 1327 |
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Ugolino di Nerio was born presumably in Siena in the last quarter of
the 13th century to a family of painters (his father Nerio and his
brothers Guido and Muccio), and was, with Segna di Bonaventura, one of
Duccio di Buoninsegna's most faithful followers. According to
documents, his artistic activity can be dated between 1317 and 1327
and, in his second edition of Lives of the Artists, Vasari mentions him
in the biography of Stefano Fiorentino, giving the date of his death as
1349.
His only signed work is the polyptych that he carried out for the
high altar of the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence in 1325. Today
dismembered and divided up among various museums abroad, it acts as a
basis for the attribution of a large number of works and therefore a
reconstruction of his artistic career, from his collaboration on the
Majesty with Duccio, carried out for the Cathedral of Siena (Museum of
the Opera del Duomo, Siena), between 1308 and 1311, where experts have
recognised the hand of the young student in the busts of the Apostles
in the front.
Ugolino must have become an independent artist in around
1315 and, at this early stage, his paintings still show strong
influences from Duccio, as in the Madonna Contini Bonaccossi at the
Pitti Palace in Florence. However by the 1320's, during the years of
his maturity, his style became more clearly defined, differing from the
work of his teacher as it showed greater spirituality, with more
elegant figures, a use of more brilliant colours and a more accentuated
Gothic style, probably due to the influence of Simone Martini.
His most outstanding works in this period include the Madonnas in the
Lehman collection and in the Church of the Servi at Montepulciano and,
above all, the monumental painting on wood for Santa Croce, divided
into seven compartments portraying the Virgin Mary and Saints, which
must have been one of the most spectacular polyptyches of the 14th
century. Vasari, who of course actually saw this altarpiece in its
original position, attributes Ugolino with another painting on wood,
which he declares he saw in the Bardi Chapel, again in Santa Croce, and
also a polyptych for the Church of Santa Maria Novella, now lost and as
yet unidentified, but whose central part has been recognised as being
the Madonna and Child in the Church of the Misericordia at San Casciano
Val di Pesa.
The contacts between the artist's workshop and the
Franciscan Order must have been particularly intense if we remember
that as many as eight polyptyches of possible Franciscan provenance are
recognisable as in his style, and almost all surviving in fragments and
scattered among various collections. Two of these have been recognised
as the St. Peter and the St. Francis in the Church of the Misericordia
at San Casciano Val di Pesa, probably pieces from the same painting on
wood that was supposed to repeat the great Santa Croce polyptych for a
minor church. Ugolino di Nerio was a highly productive and very famous
painter, who contributed towards affirming the Sienese figurative
school in Florence with important commissions for the high altars of
the two main basilicas, Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce. This took
place precisely in the period in which Giotto, whose school was
becoming more and more popular in the Franciscan church, had come back
to work in the city.
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