The Knighting of Saint Martin by Simone Martini

The Knighting of Saint Martin by Simone Martini (c. 1315–18)

A soldier's son

Martin of Tours was born in Pannonia in the fourth century. As the son of a veteran officer he was required to join the cavalry at fifteen. His biographer Sulpicius Severus, who knew him, and the other early lives mention his military service and promotions, but none of them describes a ceremony of investiture. Simone Martini supplied one from his own world: a young Roman soldier invested as a fourteenth-century knight.

The ceremony

The scene takes place in a palace loggia under a beamed wooden ceiling, with a deep blue sky showing through the arches. In the centre stands Martin, young and haloed, in a long rose-coloured robe. His sword already hangs across his body. His eyes are turned upward and one hand is raised, as if his attention were somewhere other than the ceremony.

The emperor stands in profile in front of him, crowned with a gold wreath and wearing a pale robe and cloak with a dark fur collar, and fastens the sword belt at Martin's waist. A servant in blue kneels at Martin's feet to fix a spur to his heel. The Web Gallery of Art's note points out that the emperor has to be Julian the Apostate, the only emperor the story allows. It also notes that his fixed profile recalls heads on ancient Roman coins, and that some have seen the features of Constantine in it.

On the right, court musicians play. One man plays a pair of pipes at once and another plays a lute, with singers crowded behind them. On the left, attendants hold Martin's helmet high on a staff, and one carries a falcon on his gloved hand. Hunting birds, music and fine clothes give the scene the look of a court occasion in Simone's own day. The faces are individual, and each musician looks like a particular man.

The chapel

The fresco belongs to a cycle of ten scenes from Martin's life in the chapel of San Martino, the first chapel on the left in the Lower Church of San Francesco at Assisi. It was paid for by Cardinal Gentile Partino da Montefiore, a Franciscan who held the Roman title church of Santi Silvestro e Martino ai Monti, which is why he chose Martin. A document of March 1312 records him setting aside 600 gold florins to build and decorate the chapel. He died at Lucca that October.

The frescoes are neither signed nor dated, but they are attributed to Simone Martini on grounds of style and history. Most scholars now place the work between about 1312 and 1318. Simone designed the stained glass first. He began the narrative frescoes after returning from Siena in 1315, and he broke off in 1317 to work in Naples for King Robert of Anjou before coming back to finish the saints under the entrance arch. The Guelphs were expelled from Assisi in 1319, and that is usually taken as the latest date for the work. Some catalogues date the frescoes a few years later, to the early 1320s. Giotto was at work on the right transept of the same church in these years.

This is the third scene of the cycle, on the lowest level of the chapel walls. Before it come Martin sharing his cloak with a beggar and Christ appearing to him in a dream. After it Martin renounces his weapons before the emperor, telling him, in Sulpicius's words, that he is a soldier of Christ and may not fight.

About this print

Made from a photograph of the whole fresco, in its upright format, from the beamed ceiling down to the kneeling servant with the spur.

Sources: Wikipedia, "San Martino Chapel" and "Cappella di San Martino (Assisi)" · Web Gallery of Art, "St Martin is Knighted" · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia, "Martin of Tours"