These sonnets, in truth, together with the mention made of him in one of his _Familiar Letters_, in the fifth book, which begins: "Non sum nescius," have given more fame to the poor life of Maestro Simone than all his own works have ever done or ever will, seeing that they must at some time perish, whereas the writings of so great a man will live for eternal ages. Simone Memmi of Siena, then, was an excellent painter, remarkable in his own times and much esteemed at the Court of the Pope, for the reason that after the death of Giotto his master, whom he had followed to Rome when he made the Navicella in mosaic and the other works, he made a Virgin Mary in the portico of S. Pietro, with a S. Peter and a S. Paul, near to the place where the bronze pine-cone is, on a wall between the arches of the portico on the outer side; and in this he counterfeited the manner of Giotto very well, receiving so much praise, above all because he portrayed therein a sacristan of S. Pietro lighting some lamps before the said figures with much promptness, that he was summoned with very great insistence to the Court of the Pope at Avignon, where he wrought so many pictures, in fresco and on panels, that he made his works correspond to the reputation that had been borne thither. Whence, having returned to Siena in great credit and much favoured on this account, he was commissioned by the Signoria to paint in fresco, in a hall of their Palace, a Virgin Mary with many figures round her, which he completed with all perfection to his own great credit and advantage. And in order to show that he was no less able to work on panel than in fresco, he painted in the said Palace a panel which led to his being afterwards made to paint two of them in the Duomo, and a Madonna with the Child in her arms, in a very beautiful attitude, over the door of the Office of the Works of the said Duomo. In this picture certain angels, supporting a standard in the air, are flying and looking down on to some saints who are round the Madonna, and they make a very beautiful composition and great adornment. [Illustration: SIMONE MARTINI: KNIGHTING OF S. MARTIN (_Assisi: Lower Church of S. Francesco, Chapel of S. Martin. Fresco_)]