FREDI BARTOLO DI
Bringing to the temple (Candlemas).
Siena since 1353 – Mass, 1410
Wood, 190 x 125 cm. Comes from the Kampana collection in Rome; came to Louvre in 1863 of M.I 394 (MN)
Simone Martini
When Kliment V elected the father in 1305 transferred the papal residence from Rome to Avignon, it was followed also by artists. Simone Martini – it is possible, the largest of painters of the new papal yard in Avignon – was the beacon from which light, direct or the reflected, extended very far. In a cross, in transmission of the procession quitting the city and entering on the ominous road to Golgotha, Simone followed those receptions of the image of multicurly scenes which were developed by his trainer, the Siena master of Duccio. Through Simone’s creativity influence of the Siena painting extended to rigorous Gothic painting of the North and had long influence in France.
Going down on the road from Jerusalem going down (so it was provided by Simone Martini), the crowd is hardly arranged in the movement to Golgotha. The sharp color accent selected a figure of Mary Magdalene who was distraught with grief. Her hands (traditional gesture of this sacred in an iconography of a plot of Bringing in a coffin) just over a cross which sets the direction to a ritual procession.
The Siena masters had an alive feeling of human mass, its force and character. Here everyone – be it the supporter or the spiteful persecutor of Christ – with an equal force presses remaining. And the city behind a ring of pink walls belongs to the most remarkable architectural forms among works of the Siena school.