Description
The Four Prophets are a small group of roundels attributed to Simone Martini and now preserved in the Musée du Petit Palais in Avignon. Each medallion shows a bearded head against a gold ground, set within a circular field cut into a square wooden panel. Although the pieces are tiny, they reveal an exceptionally fine pictorial sensibility: glances, inclinations of the face and the varied treatment of the beards distinguish each figure with remarkable subtlety.
They are traditionally connected with the San Francesco polyptych in Orvieto and dated around 1320–1325. Their precise belonging to that ensemble has not always been accepted without discussion, yet the group is coherent in style, format and decorative function. Seen together, the roundels help us understand how, even in secondary elements of an altarpiece, Simone Martini preserved the linear elegance, chromatic refinement and spiritual intensity characteristic of Sienese painting.
