Lippo Memmi - Stamp Work With Gold Leaf and Tin

Stamp Work With Gold Leaf and Tin

Memmi and Martini most likely settled into a familiar style in gilding patterns with the Monaldeschi altarpiece in Orvieto from about 1320 consisting of a “composite punch design of a quatrefoil set about a central rosette”. His most identifiable device is found in the alternating long and short lines depicting light emanating from the halos of saints and angels, most famously recognized in the Annunciation, yet we see this in works throughout his career such as the Virgin and Child in New York, the Virgin of Humility in Berlin, and his small Maesta in the San Domenico cloister in Siena.

Memmi's Maestà at San Gimignano is striking in the various methods of pastiglia and gilding work used. Golden tin on the throne cusps, laminated tin with gold foil for the halos which are carefully rendered with intricate punchwork, his application of these materials described as “a neat perfection rarely encountered elsewhere”. Examination of the motifs and degree of complexity in the punchwork has allowed historians to recognize the hand of Lippo Memmi and gives a clearer idea of his place in collaborations with Simone Martini. Stamp designs, gilding and the execution of rayed halos are similar, yet show that Lippo Memmi's mature gild and scribe work patterns in the 1317 San Gimignano Maestà are rooted in the simpler patterns and less developed line he applied to Martini's Maestà of 1315 at the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena.