the pencil, after a small design which served them as a guide, and enlarging each part to the proportions required, as they proceeded. And as the work here in question is seen to have been thus treated, so many others in various places have been executed in like manner, and when the colour in certain cases has scaled off, the red outlines are still discerned remaining on the wall. But to return to Lippo. This artist drew tolerably well, as may be seen in our book, where there is a hermit reading with the legs crossed, by his hand. He survived Simon twelve years, executing many paintings for all parts of Italy, more particularly two pictures for the church of Santa Croce in Florence.[1] There is a considerable resemblance in the manner of these two brothers, but they may be distinguished by the circumstance that Simon inscribed his name at the foot of his works in this manner, Simonis Memmi Senensis opus”;[2] and Lippo, omitting his baptismal name, and caring little for the rudeness of his Latinity, as follows: “ Ous Memmi de Senis me fecit”.[3] On the facade of the chapter-house of Santa Maria Novella, besides the portraits of Petrarch and Laura, of which we have before spoken, Simon Memmi depicted those of Cimabue, of Lapo the architect, and of Arnolfo his son, and finally that of himself. The pope who appears in this story, is the portrait of Benedict XI[4] of Treviso, a brother of the order of Preaching Friars, whose likeness had long before been brought to Simon by Giotto his master, when the latter returned from the court of that pontiff, who held his state in Avignon. In the same picture is the portrait of Cardinal Niccola da Prato, which Simon has placed beside that of the Pope, Cardinal Niccola being in Florence at the time, in the capacity of papal legate, as we are informed by Giovanni Villani in liis history. On the tomb of Simon was placed the
- ↑ These two pictures are lost.
- ↑ Rumohr denies that this inscription is found on the works of Simon. See Ital. Forsch., vol. ii, p. 95.
- ↑ This inscription is now affirmed to indicate a work of Memmo, the father of Simon and Lippo Memmi, and not of Lippo, whose Latinity has been anxiously defended by some of the Italian commentators on our author.
- ↑ The papal court was transferred to Avignon by Clement V, successor to Benedict XI. It was under Benedict XII, who reigned from 1334 to 1342, that Giotto and Simon were at Avignon.
