Peter Russell - Delphi Complete Works of Giotto

Giotto

(1266/7-1337)

Contents

Delphi Classics 2016

Version 1

Masters of Art Series

Giotto di Bondone

By Delphi Classics, 2016

Masters of Art - Giotto

First published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by Delphi Classics.

Delphi Classics, 2016.

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Vicchio, Tuscany, sixteen miles northeast of Florence Giottos birthplace according to tradition

The house recorded as Giottos birthplace

THE HIGHLIGHTS

In this section, a sample of Giottos most celebrated works is provided, with concise introductions, special detail reproductions and additional biographical images.

Tradition holds that Giotto was born in a farmhouse near Romignano, a hamlet north of Florence, though recent research has suggested that he was actually born in Florence, the son of a blacksmith. The year of his birth, 1266, is calculated from the fact that Antonio Pucci, the town crier of Florence, wrote a poem in Giottos honour in which it is stated that he was 70 at the time of his death. However, the word seventy fits into the rhyme scheme of the poem better than a longer and more complex age, so it is possible that Pucci used artistic license. In his Lives of the Artists , Giorgio Vasari relates that Giotto was a shepherd boy, a merry and intelligent child that was loved by all who knew him. According to tradition, Cimabue, the most gifted Florentine painter of his time along with Duccio, discovered Giotto drawing pictures of his sheep on a rock. They were so lifelike that Cimabue approached Bondone and asked if he could take the boy as an apprentice. Vasari also recounts an example of Giottos skill, writing that when Cimabue was absent from the workshop, his apprentice painted such a lifelike fly on the face of the painting that Cimabue was currently working on, that he later tried to brush it off.

The most famous tale to survive is also narrated by Vasari, who tells of when the Pope sent a messenger to Giotto, asking him to send a drawing to demonstrate his skill. Giotto drew in red paint a circle so perfect that it seemed as though it was drawn using a compass and instructed the messenger to give that to the Pope. Sending the other drawings to the Pope with the names of those that had made them, the messenger also sent Giottos, relating how he had made the circle without moving his arm and without compasses, which when the Pope and many of his courtiers understood, they saw that Giotto must surpass greatly all the other painters of his time. This legend led to a proverb, You are rounder than the O of Giotto that was apparently still used in Vasaris time to describe a dim- or slow-witted person; round meaning both a perfect circle, as well as slowness and heaviness of mind.

On one occasion, Cimabue went to Assisi to paint several large frescoes at the newly built Basilica of St Francis of Assisi and it is possible, though by no means certain, that Giotto went with him. The attribution of the fresco cycle of the Life of St. Francis in the Upper Church has been one of the most fiercely disputed acknowledgements in art history. The documents of the Franciscan Friars that relate to artistic commissions during this period were destroyed by Napoleons troops, who stabled horses in the Upper Church of the Basilica, and scholars have been divided over whether or not Giotto was responsible for the St. Francis Cycle. Due to the absence of documentary evidence, it has been convenient to ascribe every fresco in the Upper Church that was not clearly by Cimabue to Giotto, whose prestige has since greatly overshadowed any of his contemporaries.

An early biographical source, Riccobaldo Ferrarese, mentions that Giotto painted at Assisi, without specifying the St. Francis Cycle: What kind of art Giotto made is testified to by works done by him in the Franciscan churches at Assisi, Rimini, Padua... Since the idea was put forward by the German art historian Friedrich Rintelen in 1912, many scholars have expressed doubt that Giotto was in fact the author of the Upper Church frescoes. Following technical examinations and comparisons of the workshop painting processes at Assisi and Padua in 2002, strong evidence suggests that Giotto did not paint the St. Francis Cycle. There are many differences between the Francis Cycle and the Arena Chapel frescoes that are difficult to account for by the stylistic development of an individual artist. Nevertheless, the high artistic achievements of the fresco cycle clearly illustrate the influences that the young Giotto was affected by while working in Cimabues prestigious studio.

St. Francis of Assisi (San Francesco dAssisi) was an Italian Roman Catholic friar and preacher, who went on to found the mens Order of Friars Minor, the womens Order of Saint Clare, the Third Order of Saint Francis and the Custody of the Holy Land. Pope Gregory IX canonised Francis on 16 July 1228. Along with Saint Catherine of Siena, he was designated Patron saint of Italy. He later became associated with patronage of animals and the natural environment, and it became customary for Catholic and Anglican churches to hold ceremonies blessing animals on his feast day of 4 October.

In 1219, Francis went to Egypt in an attempt to convert the Sultan to put an end to the conflict of the Crusades. At this time, the Franciscan Order had grown to such an extent that its primitive organisational structure was no longer sufficient. He returned to Italy to organise the Order. Once his community was authorised by the Pope, he withdrew increasingly from external affairs. Francis is also known for his love of the Eucharist and in 1223 he arranged for the first Christmas live nativity scene. In 1224, he received the stigmata, during the apparition of Seraphic angels in a religious ecstasy making him the first recorded person to bear the wounds of Christs Passion. He died during the evening hours of October 3, 1226, while listening to a reading he had requested of Psalm 142 (141).