He was a self-taught artist, born in a farming family and raised among the hills behind Leonardo da Vinci's land. Martini was discovered by the artist Ardengo Soffici in 1926, when he went to visit Soffici's workshop in Poggio a Caiano, close to Seano, where the latter retired to paint the nature and traditional Tuscan farmers' world. Looking at the young Martini's first experiments, the maestro Soffici recognised the kind of genuine and intimate traits he valued in traditional Italian art. Quinto Martini was then taught drawing and art techniques, and exposed to art and literature with Soffici as his patron and mentor. In Soffici's library, Quinto Martini studied the French Impressionists and other modern artists: Cézanne, Degas, Picasso and the cubists, as well as Italian artists such as Giorgio Morandi, Armando Spadini, and the futurists.