Pietro Lorenzetti

Pietro Lorenzetti (Italian: [ˈpjɛːtro lorenˈtsetti]; c. 1280 – 1348) or Pietro Laurati was an Italian painter, active between c. 1306 and 1345. Together with his younger brother Ambrogio, he introduced naturalism into Sienese art. In their artistry and experiments with three-dimensional and spatial arrangements, the brothers foreshadowed the art of the Renaissance.

Little is known of Lorenzetti's life other than that he was (putatively) born in Siena in the late 13th century (c. 1280/90), died there (possibly) in 1348 a victim of the first Black Death pandemic then devastating Europe, and had a younger brother, Ambrogio, also an artist. That the men were brothers was unknown to Vasari because he misread Pietro's surname on a painting in Pistoia's church of San Francesco as "Laurati". Thus the kinship between the artists was missed. Pietro was known to have been a young man in 1306 as he was still being referred to as Petruccio di Lorenzo. However, he was at least 25 at the time because he was paid directly.

Pietro worked in Assisi, Florence, Pistoia, Cortona, and Siena, although the precise chronology is unknown.