Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
detail, a luminous palette and an increasingly refined technique. The first innovations
were made in Pisa by sculptor Nicola Pisano (c 1220-84), who emulated the example of
the French Gothic masters and studied classical sculpture in order to represent nature
more convincingly, but the major strides forward occurred in Florence and Siena.
Giotto & the 'Rebirth' of Italian Art
The Byzantine painters in Italy knew how to make use of light and shade and had an un-
derstanding of the principles of foreshortening (how to convey an effect of perspective). It
only required a genius to break the spell of their conservatism and to venture into a new
world of naturalism. Enter Florentine painter Giotto di Bondone (c 1266-1337), whose
brushstrokes focused on dramatic narrative and the accurate representation of figures and
landscape. The Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio wrote in his
Decameron
(1350-53) that
Giotto was 'a genius so sublime that there was nothing produced by nature…that he could
not depict to the life; his depiction looked not like a copy, but the real thing.'
Boccaccio wasn't the only prominent critic of the time to consider Giotto revolutionary
- the first historian of Italian art, Giorgio Vasari, said in his
Lives of the Artists
(1550) that
Giotto initiated the 'rebirth'
(rinascità
or
renaissance)
in art. Giotto's most famous works
are all in the medium of the fresco (where paint is applied on a wall while the plaster is
still damp), and his supreme achievement is the cycle gracing the walls of Padua's Cap-
pella degli Scrovegni. It's impossible to overestimate Giotto's achievement with these
frescoes, which illustrate the stories of the lives of the Virgin and Christ. Abandoning pop-
ular conventions such as the three-quarter view of head and body, he presented his figures
from behind, from the side or turning around, just as the story demanded. Giotto had no
need for lashings of gold paint and elaborate ornamentation either, opting to convey the
scene's dramatic tension through a naturalistic rendition of figures and a radical composi-
tion that created the illusion of depth.
Giotto's oeuvre isn't limited to the frescoes in the Cappella degli Scrovegni. His Life of
St Francis cycle in the Upper Church of the Basilica di San Francesco in Assisi is almost
as extraordinary and was to greatly influence his peers, many of whom worked in Assisi
during the decoration of the church. One of the most prominent of these was the Dominic-
an friar Fra' Angelico (c 1395-1455), a Florentine painter who was famed for his mastery
of colour and light. His
Annunciation
(c 1450) in the convent of the Museo di San Marco
in Florence is arguably his most accomplished work.
