Barna da Siena

Barna da Siena, also called Berna di Siena, was a Sienese painter said to have been active from about 1330 to 1350, credited by the fifteenth-century writer Lorenzo Ghiberti with Old Testament frescoes in the Collegiata of San Gimignano. Modern scholarship doubts he was a single historical figure at all: stylistic inconsistencies in the San Gimignano frescoes suggest the work of several hands closely tied to the circle of Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi rather than one master. The paintings attributed to him are marked by dramatically expressive figures and emotionally charged compositions that lean toward Florentine naturalism rather than the more formal Gothic manner of most Sienese painting of the period. Tradition holds that the painter fell from scaffolding and died young, around 1360, though even this detail rests on later legend rather than documentary record. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/