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CHAPTER III. SIMONE MARTINI. Petrarch, sighing through two hundred sonnets, sings the charms of Laura, and soaring high in realms of fancy imagines her in paradise, whence “Simon” brings her likeness down to earth, convincing humble mortals of her celestial beauty, and giving her all but voice and intellect. It is, in humble prose, that Simone, the great but affected delineator of female beauty, one day retraced, with art more perishable than the rhyme of Petrarch, the charms which were the joy and torment of the poet’s life. 1 Yet Petrarch when content to let the muses slumber and drop the classic contrasts of Pygmalion and Polycletus, gave Simone his proper place amongst the artists of his country. “I bequeathe, he said in his will, my picture of the Virgin by the noble painter Giotto, whose beauty, un intelligible to the ignorant, is a wonder to the masters of the art;” 2 and in his letters, “I have known two painters, talented both, and excellent, Giotto of Florenco whose fame amongst the moderns is great, and Simone of Sienna.” 3 Simone,- second only to Giotto, and famous still after the Florentine had been consigned to the grave, was born in 1283 4 and was son to one Martino. He married, in 1324, Giovanna the daughter of Memmo di Filipuccio a painter. 5 * Le Rime di Francesco Petrarca. Vol. I. Milan 1834. 12°. Sonnets XLIX and L. p. 57. 2 The passage is in Va s. ub. sup. Yol. I. p. 336. But see the whole will in Paul Manutius, annot. by Jo. H. Acker. Ru- dolstadt 1711. 12°. p. 7. 3 Opera. Vol. II. p. 725. Epist. 17. lib. V. 4 Vas. Vol. II. p.p. 96 and 98. 5 Doc. Sen. Vol. I. p. 216.