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By Simon Memmi, Ruskin means those works grouped by Vasari under the heading ‘Simone Sanese’ because of their place in his narrative of the development of Florentine painting and its relationship to Sienese painting. The works by ‘Simone Memmi’ with which Ruskin was familiar in 1849 included three walls of the Spanish Chapel at Santa Maria Novella and work at the Campo Santo in Pisa. It seems likely that neither of these was the work of Simone Martini, not least because Simone Martini had been dead for twenty-one years at the time of the work on the Spanish Chapel, for which there is a contract dated 30 December 1365. Vasari's point about their qualities - and Ruskin's - remains important. However, Ruskin's characterisation of Simone as ‘simple and unlearned’ (Works, 11.62) seems gratuitously and offensively patronising.
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[Version 0.05: May 2008]