Ugolino
Lorenzetti

Ugolino Lorenzetti — a fictitious artist's name. In fact, an artist by the name Ugolino Lorenzetti did not exist. This name was invented by the famous art critic Bernard Berenson to denote a range of paintings, stylistically close manner as Ugolino di Nerio and Pietro Lorenzetti. Today it is established that all these pictures belong to the brush of Bartolomeo Bulgarini.

About Bartolomeo Bulgarini mentions in his "Lives of the most famous painters" by Giorgio Vasari. He said that Bartolomeo was a pupil of Pietro Lorenzetti, and even wrote a portrait of his teacher, who had previously been kept in Siena. For a long time it was believed that the work of Bartolomeo Bulgarini not preserved. However, the artist was "re-opened".

Its "discoverer", the famous connoisseur of Italian art, Bernard Berenson, was first identified stylistically close to the paintings, but without knowing the name of the author, invented for him a conditional name "Ugolino Lorenzetti" because of the proximity of these paintings as to the manner of Ugolino di Nerio and the manner of Pietro Lorenzetti. Another group of paintings, overlapping with the one identified Berenson, a different researcher, Devildom, was attributed to the hand of an anonymous master, whom he called "the master of the Ovile" (ital. Maestro d'ovile) the painting, located in the Sienese Church of San Pietro a Ovile. In 1936, the authorship of both groups of paintings have been identified with the figure of Bartolomeo Bulgarini.

There is no signed Bartolomeo Bulgarini works. In the inventory of Siena Cathedral, made in the XVI century, an artist by the name of Bulgarini called the author of the painting "Christmas", which adorned the altar of St. Victor (each of the four patron saints of Siena has its own private altar in the Cathedral, and the altar of St. Victor is one of them). Among the authors who have written patterns for these altars can be called in many ways such artists as Simone Martini and Lippo memmi ("the Annunciation" now in the Uffizi gallery, Florence), Pietro Lorenzetti ("Nativity of Mary" — Siena, Cathedral) and his brother Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Over time, the experts agreed that the "Christmas" referred to in the inventory of the XVI century, is the painting "adoration of the shepherds", which is kept at Cambridge, at the Art Museum Fogg, and dates from around 1350. The painting was seriously damaged from rough podavlenii and sawing edges. In this work one can see a skillful balance between two-dimensional ploskovato characteristic of Sienese painting of the fourteenth century, and the illusory depth of the painting, created by using two thin columns.

In the Sienese and Florentine archival documents, Bartholomew is mentioned several times with 1337 1378 for the year. In 1345 his name appears in connection with minor works; in 1349, according to the documents, he writes frescoes in the Porta di Camollia (the city gates of Siena); these murals have not survived, as well as not preserved by the artist's paintings for the chapel of St. Sylvester in the Florentine Church of Santa Croce, and for the Sienese hospital of Santa Maria della Scala, which appear in the documents. In 1363 the name of Bartolomeo Bulgarini appears in the list of the Guild of Sienese painters, and recording from 1370 reports that the master, along with his wife shall enter into the brotherhood when the Sienese hospital of Santa Maria della Scala, which was not so much a hospital in the modern sense, how much charity, shelter for the afflicted and boarding school for abandoned children. From this moment until the end of the life of Bartolomeo has been associated with this charitable Sienese public institution. The entry of 4 September 1378 reports about his death.

Bartolomeo Bulgarini. Madonna and child with St. Ansano and Galgano. approx. 1335 Siena, Pinacoteca.

Based on the technical features of the manufacture of paintings of that era have been suggested, gaining more supporters, that after the plague of 1348 Bartolomeo Bulgarini headed the largest in the Siena art Studio, where he performed the works of many famous Sienese masters. Bulgarini created paintings not only for institutions of the Siena Cathedral or the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala (for which he wrote five works), but he also worked in Florence, San Gimignano, Pienza, Grosseto and Lucca. Today his hand is attributed to the quite extensive range of works (mostly separate parts of disassembled altarpieces), which are stored in the best collections in the world — the Washington National gallery (SV. Catherine of Alexandria, CA. 1335), the Louvre (the Crucifixion CA. 1350), St. Petersburg Hermitage Museum (the Crucifixion, after 1330), new York's Metropolitan Museum of art (St. Matthew and Thomas, approx. 1350), the Siena Pinacoteca (assumption of the virgin Mary; St. Ansano; SV. Galgano; the Madonna and child, approx 1335), at meetings of Germany — the Cologne Wallraf-Richartz Museum Richartz (Madonna with child enthroned, approx. 1350 g; SV. Peter, approx. 1350; SV. Matthew approx. 1350г; SV. Francis), as well as in Berlin and Frankfurt am main; in Christian Museum of the Hungarian city of Esztergom ((Moses, approx. 1350 and the Prophet Daniel, CA. 1350), in the largest private collections — Kress (Madonna with child) and Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum (Madonna and child with four angels and the saints-martyrs), as well as in the churches of Tuscany.