Ambrogio Lorenzetti

Ambrogio Lorenzetti (c. 1290-after 1348) was an Italian painter of the Sienese school, active from roughly 1317 to 1348 and the younger brother of the painter Pietro Lorenzetti. He is best known for The Allegory of Good and Bad Government, a cycle of frescoes in the Sala dei Nove of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, considered one of the masterworks of early secular painting; its depiction of a well governed town and countryside amounts to a detailed pictorial record of medieval life and contains what may be the earliest documented appearance of an hourglass in Western art. He experimented with perspective and classical themes well ahead of his time.