Lippo Memmi - Attribution and Artistic Legacy

Attribution and Artistic Legacy

A considerable amount of ongoing research on unsigned panels and altarpieces of early to mid Trecento Sienese art has revealed the plausible influence of Memmi on various artists in the generation following the outbreak of the Black Death in 1348. Thus, a more complete understanding of his style and artistic achievements continues to emerge. His status as an artist of personal expression, rather than simply a craftsman and “Fratello in Arte” of his brother-in-law Simone Martini is gaining acceptance.

Research in the 1920s began to separate the works of Lippo Memmi from those of Guido da Siena. It was also accepted that an artist bearing the name Barna was a fellow student under Simone Martini and an artistic collaborator with Memmi. In attributing the panel of St. Agnes to Memmi, Heaton states that it is “...a panel endowed with unity of design and characteristics rarely found in the works of an artist not possessing a more independent, creative personality than is usually predicated of Lippo Memmi”.

The New Testament cycle of frescos in the Collegiate Church of San Gimignano, though to date from the 1340s, are now generally attributed to Lippo Memmi. Traditionally they were attributed to Barna of Siena, but it is thought now that this artist never existed, even though the attribution dates from the writing of the Renaissance art biographer Giorgio Vasari. Vasari took the name from an earlier work by Ghiberti, but it is thought that "Barna" might have been wrongly transcribed from "Bartolo", and referred to Bartolo di Fredi who painted the Old Testament cycle in the opposite aisle of the church. This suggests that other works attributed to Barna could be works of Memmi and thus his stylistic adherence to Simone Martini is less binding.