Style
Memmi's figures retain the static and generally frontal view found in the earlier generation of late Duecento masters such as Guido da Siena. Common features of his documented and attributed work are the sophisticated compositional arrangements, figures rendered with a striking facial roundness, narrow eyes, graceful brow lines, and elongated noses.
Memmi's figures are considered less innovative than those of his Trecento contemporaries, the sensibility of the lines used in the face and the eyes harken back to the conventions of the Byzantine tradition. Though they demonstrate Memmi's adherence to earlier conventions of emphasizing the spiritual function of Medieval art, there are also indications of the forward looking stylistic developments of his fellow Sienese masters. A description of his St. Agnes panel (1300–50) shows how Memmi's pictorial style was less severe and angular than the Duecento works his imagery recalled: “...has softer qualities and its spirit is tranquil”. Indeed his depiction of emotion and realism is also subdued by this 'soft tranquility', leaving figures to read as somewhat archaic, yet projecting a dreamy quality.
Memmi is remembered for distinctive stamped tin halos with ray patterns in gold leaf. This interest in design carries over to Memmi's observation of fabric patterns and their placement. He is also known as an effective miniaturist, using sgraffito to delicately render garments as depicted in the Griggs Madonna and Child (1350) at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Assumption of the Virgin (1340) at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. Memmi's interest in detail is evident in his innovative compositional devices using simple geometric shapes such as the circular arrangement of the angels in the Assumption of the Virgin.
The term “Lippesque', coined by Joseph Polzer, describes the overall effect of Memmi's visual devices found in several Madonna and Christ images. “The seated Christ Child in the central image, and especially his head which is axially and frontally ordered ... heads close to spheroid in shape and share a dominating large forehead crowned by an identical centrally located whirl of hair”. These Lippesque elements are on display in the Sienese panel S. Maria dei Servi, which Polzer uses to demonstrate Memmi's authorship of the Madonna and Child and the Coronation of the Virgin at the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, rather than Simone Martini.
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