Giovanni di Paolo

His early works show the influence of earlier Sienese masters, but his later style was more individual, characterized by cold, harsh colours and elongated forms.

A few of these include the following: Gentile da Fabriano's two Florentine altarpieces, Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Presentation in the Temple, and the Baptistery reliefs by Donatello.

[7] However much it would be looked down upon today to copy, in trecento and quattrocento Siena the culture valued an artist that could manipulate others' work and make it their own as creatively as Giovanni did.

It seems their Northern influence may have rubbed off on Giovanni because his landscapes resemble those in the famous painting by the Limbourg brothers; Tres Riches Heures.

[19] If one looks at the Madonna of Humility (1435) the checkerboard landscape confirms the world beyond the garden scene in the foreground (also referred to as the hortus conclusus).

This checkerboard panorama effect is used frequently by Giovanni for its ability "to create an abstraction of space, whose appeal is not to the fixed optic of the spectator, so much as to the winged flight of the dream-voyager."

[20] Working on what is known today as Yates Thompson 36 in the British Library's catalog, Giovanni created 61 images to accompany the vernacular poem.

[22] Giovanni di Paolo used his unique style to create an obviously Tuscan panorama in a sun-filled world that is much lighter and fresher than the two previous artists of the Inferno and Purgatorio.

A panel painting created after, and inspired by, this cycle of illuminations is The Creation and The Expulsion from Paradise (1445) in the Lehman Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Giovanni created a unique image by showing two separate scenes in one; God floating above the universe and the expulsion of Adam and Eve.

A viable argument for this question is that by following the gaze of God's gesture the viewer's eye is led to a specific point on the Zodiac circle.

[24] One proposed reasoning for such a gesture is that it is to remind the viewer of the Annunciation's significance, and to reflect upon "the purpose of the coming of Christ – to "repair the Fall" enacted by Adam and Eve in the adjoining sector of the panel, and to redeem the sins of man, which their Expulsion represents.

One argument is because during this time a geocentric view of the universe was widely accepted, Giovanni was simply following Dante's description of a "terrestrial world bounded by the orbits of the heavenly spheres".