Giotto di Bondone

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Giotto di Bondone (Colle di Vespignano, near Florence 1267 – January 8, Florence 1337), better known simply as Giotto, was a Florentine painter and architect. He is generally considered the first in a line of great artists who contributed to and developed the Italian Renaissance.

Giotto was born in poverty in the countryside near Florence, the son of Bondone, a peasant, and was himself a shepherd. Most authors believe that Giotto was his real name, and not an abbreviation of Ambrogio (Ambrogiotto) or Angelo (Angelotto).

Giotto's master work is the Arena Chapel cycle of the Cappella degli Scrovegni in Padua depicting the life of the Virgin and the passion of Christ completed around 1305. The scheme has 100 major scenes with the heavily sculptural figures set in compressed but naturalistic settings often using forced perspective devices. Giotto's major innovation was to conceive of a painted architectural framework or grisaille using trompe-l'oeil effects that directly influenced Masaccio and in turn Michelangelo in his scheme for the Sistine Chapel. Famous panels in the series include the Adoration of the Magi in which a comet like Star of Bethlehem streaks across the sky and the Flight from Egypt in which Giotto broke many traditions for the depiction of the scene. The scenes from the Passion were much admired by artists of the Renaissance for their concentrated emotional and dramatic force, especially the "Lamentation over the Dead Christ", and studies of the sequence by Michelangelo exist. The Ognissanti Madonna now in the Uffizi and the sole surviving major panel work by the artist also dates from this period.

Later life

At the request of the Pope, Giotto spent ten years in Rome and then was employed by the King of Naples but little work remains from this period. After 1320 Giotto returned to Florence where he completed two fresco cycles and a number of altar pieces for the church of Santa Croce. Both of the fresco groups were badly damaged though show that in later years Giotto's style had become more ornate perhaps as a response to the emerging International Gothic. In 1334 Giotto was appointed chief architect to Florence Cathedral of which the Campanile bears his name but was not completed to his design.

In his final years Giotto became friends with Boccaccio and Sacchetti who feature him in their stories. Giotto died while working on a "Last Judgement" for the Bargello Chapel in Florence including a portrait of Dante.

Gallery

The Kiss of Judas

Dante Alighieri

A scene from the life of Saint Francis of Assisi

External links

• The Mourning of Christ (1305)
• [1]

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