Giotto Biography

Giotto

(Giotto di Bondone; Colle di Vespignano, present-day Italy, 1267-Florence, 1337) Italian architect and painter.He was the first Italian creator to overcome the Byzantine tendencies in painting of his time and explore orientations that eventually led to the great artistic revolution of the Renaissance.

Giotto

There are discrepancies regarding his origins and training, but it seems certain that he was formed with Cimabue, in whose iconographic tradition some are inscribed of his creations, such as the Crucifix of Santa Maria Novella , where the figure of Jesus Christ is endowed with a deeper human sense than in his master.The oldest work attributed to him are the frescoes in the upper church of Assisi, specifically the Historia de San Francisco , although this attribution constitutes one of the most debated problems in the history of art.The presence of Giotto in Assisi around 1290 is documented with certainty, but there are too many stylistic differences between this work, composed of twenty-eight scenes from the life of Saint Francis of Assisi, and others safely assigned to the master.

In 1304 Giotto moved to Padua to paint the frescoes commissioned by the Scrovegni family in a chapel of their property.The frescoes in this chapel, known as the Scrovegni or the Arena, are the only ones that are assigned with certainty to the master.They include a Last Judgment (west wall), an Annunciation (arch of the presbytery) and scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary and the Passion of Christ (remaining walls), under which are personifications of virtues and vices painted in grisaille in order to create relief effects.

The work as a whole denotes a new conception of painting due to the attention paid by the artist both to the creation of perspective effects and to the unification of space, which succeeds in integrating the figures with the elements architectural structures that serve as a framework.The solemnity and drama that pervade these scenes is enhanced by the use of pure and nuanced colors.

The Adoration of the Magi (fresco from the Scrovegni Chapel, c.1305)

From the completion of the Padua chapel to the beginning of his other great fresco work, Giotto was busy with works of a lesser order, such as the Madonna of Ognissanti and the Crucifix of the Malatestiano temple in Rimini.Starting in 1317, the master worked in Florence, decorating two chapels in the church of Santa Croce; the scenes from the life of Saint Francis painted in the Bardi chapel announce the pictorial ideals of the Quattrocento; the frescoes on the life of Saint John the Baptist in the Peruzzi Chapel anticipate Masaccio's spatial conquests.

Later, Giotto worked for Roberto de Anjou, in Naples, and for the Visconti, in Milan.But the most relevant work of the last years of his life was the campanile of the Florence Cathedral, of which he drew up the plans and began construction.The master's profoundly innovative art did not leave his contemporaries indifferent, and already in his time he enjoyed immense fame.Figures of his time such as Dante and Boccaccio praised him, and many disciples perpetuated his conquests until the end of the 14th century, although it is considered that his true artistic epigones were Masaccio and Michelangelo.