Brief Biography-Ambrogio Lorenzetti initially received tuition from his elder brother Pietro, who had been a pupil of Duccio di Buoninsegna along with Simone Martini. The works of the sculptor Giovanni Pisano and the painter Giotto influenced both brothers; however, Ambrogio was considered the more talented of the two. Consequently, the Sienese held him as the foremost painter of his time.
The first dated work in 1319 was the Madonna and Child at Vico L’Abate, Florence. His most outstanding achievement is The Allegory of Good and Bad Government in the Hall of the Nine or Peace Hall at the Palazzo Pubblico Siena. A revolving chamber called The Nine, which sat in the Peace Hall, ruled Siena with a republican emphasis. The Allegory is remarkable because it is Italy’s first vast landscape fresco and has a secular theme instead of a religious subject. It depicts the bustling Siena they governed since 1287.
It is not clear when Ambrogio was born and died. However, the Rev. M. Pilkington wrote he was born in 1267 and died in 1350, aged 83. More recently stated, he was born in the 1290s and died of the Black Death in 1348. Other calamities ravaged the lands into the 1340s, with floods, famine, and smallpox. As a result, up to seventy per cent of the population died, altering the economic landscape and shifting the religious and artistic ideals of the fourteenth century.