Simone De Florentia

Place: Florence

Biography:

Simone da Firenze, also known as Simo or Simon de Florentia, was an Italian painter active in the area of the Spanish vicereign of the Cinquecento, corresponding to the current Basilicata region in southern Italy. Despite his name designating him as a 'Florentine', the artist was active exclusively in the Italian South, in Naples before and after Polidoro da Caravaggio's stay in 1523-1524, and finally in Basilicata. He arrived in Basilicata through the mediation of the Franciscans and the Sanseverino of Salerno, Bisignano, and Marsico, who owned the feuds of San Chirico Raparo, Salandra, and Potenza in Basilicata, where Simone's paintings are preserved. The artist's presence in Basilicata is attested by the epigraph of the Polittico della chiesa di San Francesco a Senise, signed by MR (Magister) Simon de Florentia and dated to 1523. Although the work still adheres to the archaic type of the altarpiece with multiple compartments and shows a mentality still rooted in the late Quattrocento, it already reveals a desire to modernize the expressive language, oriented towards the lesson of Raphael but filtered through the prints of Marcantonio Raimondi, the Neapolitan translation of Polidoro da Caravaggio, and the style of the Venetian school.