Giotto di Bondone

Italian painter

• Born: c. 1266
• Birthplace: Vespignano, near Florence (now in Italy)
• Died: January 8, 1337
• Place of death: Florence (now in Italy)

Giotto, the first major figure in European painting, was among the first to concentrate on the individual, an interest later shared by Renaissance artists; his paintings are remarkable for their revelations of human complexity.

Giotto’s painting marked such a departure from his predecessors that anecdotes of his self-confidence and originality usually are given some credit. According to one of these stories, he once painted a fly on the nose of a face on which Cimabue was working. The fly was so lifelike that the master tried to brush it off his painting several times before he grasped his student’s jest. Giotto was also bold and outspoken: On one occasion he is recorded as having attacked the Franciscans for the fetish they made of their vows of poverty. It is likely that Giotto perfected his technique by traveling with Cimabue and helping him to complete many of his commissioned works.

Life’s Work

Many of Giotto’s paintings have disappeared, and there is still considerable debate about others that have been attributed to him. Some scholars, for example, identify the decorations in the Upper Church of the Basilica of Saint Francis as Giotto’s first major work, but others question whether the painting style is congruent with other, less controversial Giotto frescoes. Perhaps his earliest surviving work is a 19-foot (6-meter) Crucifixion. It has won the admiration of some critics because Christ is depicted somewhat naturalistically, with his flesh sagging, rather than as the tense and trim figure of traditional art. At either end of the cross, the Virgin and Saint John sadly gaze at Christ another departure from many medieval paintings, which include several allegorical scenes and various kinds of decoration. The emotion that is pictured is graphic yet austerely presented. Although some critics have not been impressed with the work’s originality, doubting that it is Giotto’, Ricuccio Pucci, a parishioner of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, left funds in his will to keep a lamp perpetually burning before the crucifix “by the illustrious painter, Giotto.”

Early Life

Giotto (JAHT-toh), which is perhaps the shortened form of the name Ambrogiotto, was the son of Bondone, a farmer of some distinction. Although not much can be authenticated in various legends of Giotto’s childhood, there is some warrant for believing that he was a precocious talent picked out at an early age by Cimabue

In about 1304, Giotto began work on a series of thirty-eight frescoes in the Scrovegni Arena Chapel in Padua, painted a cycle of religious scenes that are considered to be some of the greatest works of Italian art, and created a three-part narrative in the Arena Chapel by arranging three horizontal strips of pictures around the walls. The top strip (scenes 1-12) portrays the early life of the Virgin. The second strip (scenes 17-27) depicts the early life of Christ. The final strip reenacts the passion of Christ those events stemming from Judas’s treachery to Pentecost, fifty days after the Resurrection, when the Holy Ghost descended on the disciples in tongues of fire and in the rushing of wind that gave them the power to speak to people of different languages.

The task the artist set for himself was enormous; it was nothing less than a retelling of the entire Christian legend. Not only did he confront the challenge of designing so many different scenes, he also had to find ways of inconspicuously indicating the narrative line and framing scenes so that they had the continuity of a story. The problem was to avoid the static, spectacle-like quality of individual panels, which might easily tire the eye. Somehow the artist had to generate movement between scenes while making them seem complete in themselves. Giotto met this technical challenge the way twentieth century filmmakers would, ensuring that each scene matched the others to form a flawless sequence. He also made sure that each scene flowed from left to right as a page is read. The central action is in the center of the panel as in scene 23, The Baptism of Christ but the flanking figures on the left look at and past Christ, whereas the figures on the right look directly at him.

Giotto’s deft management of movement in these scenes is complemented by his precise and sensitive handling of the smaller details and individual figures. As one critic points out, the artist never simply paints a symbol; every object bears the mark of careful observation and drawing as in the tree with its barren branches and the weeping angels that convey the cosmic tragedy of the Crucifixion. The angels in flight who clasp their hands, grip their faces, bow their heads, or raise their faces, evoke the many different postures of suffering, whereas the tree stands alone, to the side, a mute sign of the emptiness that accompanies grief.

The conclusion to Giotto’s monumental Christian narrative in the Arena Chapel was The Last Judgment , a gigantic fresco on the entrance wall of the chapel. Christ sits, ringed in an oval, surrounded by the Apostles, judging the saved and the damned. Above Christ, angels roll back the heavens to reveal the gates of Paradise. Below him are the horrors of Hell, full of writhing, bent over, wretched creatures. The fresco abounds with numbers of figures strategically placed to reveal the hierarchy of Creation. The population density and the compositional dynamic are so great that the viewer is overwhelmed with the magnificence of the divine economy. On this one wall, every viewer was expected to find his or her own place in the universe. Perhaps this is one reason that Giotto put himself, as well as Enrico Scrovegni, the donor of the chapel, near the bottom of the fresco among a group of the blessed. Scrovegni is pictured presenting a model of the chapel itself, as though Giotto wanted to emphasize what human hands had wrought. The Arena Chapel is a startling work of religious art, for it invites viewers to admire an artist’s conception of the Last Judgment. In a rather modern way, this conceit of the model draws attention to the work of art itself and to the artist.

Giotto went on to create beautiful frescoes in the Peruzzi Chapel and the Bardi Chapel. Among his greatest works are Saint John the Baptist and the Life of Saint Francis . As in his earlier work, the artist created cycles of scenes that told powerful stories. Nevertheless, he extended his technique by setting his monumental figures against equally monumental buildings, thus creating a deep sense of space absent from his earlier paintings. Although these works are not informed by the principles of perspective that give objects the illusion of three dimensions and measure space in mathematical proportions, the clarity and intricacy of Giotto’s compositions come close to achieving the effects of the sophisticated methods perfected shortly after his death. Even when Giotto’s paintings are, so to speak, out of perspective as in the case of The Raising of Drusiana , where Saint John the Evangelist’s fingers are much too long the dramatic impact of exaggerating certain parts of the fresco reveal the soundness of Giotto’s art. It is the simple, rugged, spiritual power of Saint John’s gesturing fingers, not their size, which is important. The saint’s sheer physicality makes the story of the raising of Drusiana a palpable experience.

Significance

Late in his career, Giotto turned to architecture , a natural development in an artist given to creating massive frescoes peopled with so many different examples of humanity and architectural forms. Sometime after 1330, he was named chief architect of the cathedral in Florence. He lived as an artist of great influence with many pupils and admirers and was esteemed by such great literary figures as Dante, Petrarch, and Giovanni Boccaccio. Giovanni Villani, a contemporary historian, wrote that Giotto was entombed in the Florentine cathedral “with great honors and at the expense of the commune.” This last observation suggests something important about his art: It was communal in the largest sense. A civilization believed that he painted for them and represented to them an encompassing vision of existence with greater imagination than any of his predecessors. The scale on which Giotto worked has never been surpassed. The epic grandeur of his frescoes, the human interest of his smaller scenes, capture the many levels on which life and art can be appreciated.

Bibliography

Basile, Giuseppe, ed. Giotto, the Arena Chapel Frescoes. New York: Thames and Hudson. An examination of Giotto’s frescoes in the Arena Chapel. Contains color illustrations and index.

Basile, Giuseppe. Giotto: The Frescoes of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. New York: Rizzolli, 2002. Focuses on Giotto’s frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel and briefly discusses his life. Color illustrations and bibliography.

Derbes, Anne, and Mark Sandona, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Giotto. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. A critical analysis of Giotto’s works. Bibliography and index.

Flores d’Arcais, Francesca. Giotto. New York: Abbeville Press, 1995. A study of Giotto’s life and works that examines the Franciscan Cycle in Assisi, his work for the Florentine bankers, and his work as an architect. Bibliography and indexes.

Haegen, Anne Mueller von der. Giotto di Bondone, about 1267-1337. Koln: Könemann Verlagsgesellschaft, 1998. Part of the Masters of Italian Art series, this work examines the life and works of Giotto. Contains color illustrations and a bibliography.

Ladis, Andrew, ed. The Arena Chapel and the Genius of Giotto: Padua. New York: Garland, 1998. A collection of essays on Giotto and his art, focusing on the Arena Chapel and Padua. Illustrated.

Ladis, Andrew, ed. Franciscanism, the Papacy, and Art in the Age of Giotto. New York: Garland, 1998. A collection of essays on Giotto and Franciscanism and other religious influences. Illustrated.

Ladis, Andrew, ed. Giotto and the World of Early Italian Art: An Anthology of Literature. New York: Garland, 1998. A collection of works on Giotto and early Italian art, looking at Giotto in Padua, Florence, Assisi, and Rome.

Ladis, Andrew, ed. Giotto as a Historical and Literary Figure. New York: Garland, 1998. A collection of essays focusing on the artist’s role in history. Contains essays dealing with how artist Pietro d’Abano and biographer Giorgio Vasari viewed Giotto.

Lunghi, Elvio. The Basilica of Saint Francis at Assisi: The Frescoes by Giotto, His Precursors, and Followers. London: Thames and Hudson, 1996. A study of Giotto’s work at the Basilica of Saint Francis at Assisi. Contains color illustrations and a bibliography.