Art

Giotto

c. 1267–1337 · Florentine (Italian)

Proto-Renaissance (Late Gothic)

Giotto di Bondone was a Florentine painter and architect often called the father of Western painting. He broke with the flat, stylised Byzantine manner, giving his figures weight, emotion and a believable space, and so pointed the way to the Renaissance a century later.

How to spot them

▸Solid, block-like figures with heavy drapery set against flat deep-blue skies
▸Frescoes telling Bible stories in a sequence of boxed scenes, as in the Scrovegni (Arena) Chapel, Padua
▸Quiz clue: 'Florentine', 'Cimabue's pupil', 'Arena Chapel', a perfect circle drawn freehand, or a space probe named after him

Key works

Scrovegni Chapel frescoes (c. 1305)

Scrovegni (Arena) Chapel, Padua

His masterpiece: a complete fresco cycle of the lives of the Virgin and Christ, plus a Last Judgment

Image: Zairon · CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Lamentation (The Mourning of Christ) (c. 1305)

Scrovegni Chapel, Padua

Grieving figures, some seen from behind, and a diagonal rock ridge make it one of the most emotional images of its age

Image: Gennadii Saus i Segura · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

Ognissanti Madonna (c. 1310)

Uffizi Gallery, Florence

A Maestà in which the Virgin has real bodily weight; hangs near Cimabue's and Duccio's versions

Image: Giotto · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

Stefaneschi Triptych (c. 1320)

Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican City

Altarpiece made for Old St Peter's Basilica for Cardinal Stefaneschi

Image: Giotto._ · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

Giotto's Campanile (begun 1334)

Florence Cathedral, Florence

The bell tower beside Florence's Duomo, designed by Giotto late in life and completed after his death

Image: Thermos · CC BY-SA 2.5, Wikimedia Commons

Quick-fire facts

•His Adoration of the Magi in the Scrovegni Chapel shows the Star of Bethlehem as a comet, probably inspired by Halley's Comet of 1301
•The European Space Agency's 1985 probe to Halley's Comet was named Giotto in his honour
•Vasari tells how Giotto proved his skill to a papal envoy by drawing a perfect circle freehand — the 'O of Giotto'
•Dante, in the Purgatorio, wrote that Giotto's fame had eclipsed that of Cimabue, traditionally his teacher
•The Scrovegni Chapel was commissioned by Enrico Scrovegni, whose father Reginaldo is placed among the usurers in Dante's Inferno
•In 1334 he was appointed chief architect (capomaestro) of Florence Cathedral
•The Legend of St Francis frescoes in the Upper Basilica at Assisi are traditionally attributed to him, though this is disputed

Drill it — 9 cards

1 / 9new card

Sources

Encyclopaedia Britannica — Giotto
E. H. Gombrich — The Story of Art