Giotto And The 14th Century

Taddeo Gaddi: From the Story of Christ and St Francis

By Aniko Horvath

The most complete exhibition ever dedicated to the painter known as the father of the Renaissance has opened at the Vittoriano in Rome.
Giotto e il Trecento. Il piu' sovrano Maestro stato in dipintura (“Giotto And The 14th Century: The most sovereign master of painting”), features over 150 works of art, including twenty panels on loan from major museums around the world, exploring the life and times of Giotto di Bondone (c.1267-1337) and his groundbreaking impact on 14th-century art.
The exhibition features wooden sculptures, illuminated manuscripts, goldwork and paintings by a variety of key figures from the 1300s, including painters like Cimabue, Simone Martini and Pietro Lorenzetti.
Giotto was born in the countryside outside Florence, probably in 1267, to a peasant family named Bondone. Legend has it that as a young shepherd boy Giotto was discovered by the great Florentine painter Ciambue, drawing pictures of his sheep on a rock. Whether the tale is true or not, the young Giotto certainly went to study as an apprentice at Cimabue’s studio in Florence.
The later 16th century chronicler of the greatest Renaissance artists Giorgio Vasari says Giotto’s contribution to art history was nothing less than grounbreaking: “...He made a decisive break with the ...Byzantine style, and brought to life the great art of painting as we know it today, introducing the technique of drawing accurately from life, which had been neglected for more than two hundred years.” It was Giotto who used perspective and chiaroscuro to breathe life into art and to make it truly human. The feature which more than any other sets Giotto's work apart from that of his contemporaries is his depiction of the human face and of human emotion in both expression and gesture.
Giotto's earliest works were for the Dominicans at the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. These include a fresco of the Annunciation and an enormous painted Crucifix about 5 meters high, where the physical agony of Christ is rendered as never before.


Giotto di Bondone: Polyptych,
Christ between St John the Evangelist, the Madonna, John the Baptist and St Francis, 1310-1315

As the year of Giotto’s birth and his early career remain subjects of dispute, so does the order in which he completed his works and even their attribution. The most controversial case concerns the frescoes in what was at that time the largest “building site” in Italy, the church of San Francesco in Assisi. While the debate will probably never be settled, many experts believe that Giotto’s involvement in the work marked the true beginning of his career as an artist and that the magnificent cycle of 28 frescoes depicting the life of St. Francis are a landmark in Western art.

At the turn of the 14th century Giotto produced a series of major paintings, including the Badia Polyptych and his most influential and acclaimed work, the painted decoration of the interior of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua between 1303 and 1305. These frescoes are acknowledged as a universal masterpiece and, unusually for Giotto, universally acknowledged as his work.
From 1306 to 1311 Giotto was in Assisi, where he painted frescoes in the transept area of the Lower Church, including The Life of Christ and Franciscan Allegories.
In 1311 he returned to Florence. A document from 1312 also shows his presence in Rome, where he executed a mosaic for the façade of the old St. Peter’s Basilica. In 1318 Giotto began to paint chapels for four different Florentine families (Bardi, Peruzzi, Giugni and Tosinghi Spinelli) in the Church of Santa Croce. The Peruzzi Chapel was especially renowned during Renaissance times, and Michelangelo is known to have studied it.

In 1334 Giotto was appointed capomastro, or surveyor of the Duomo in Florence and architect to the city, a tribute to his enormous fame and artistic excellence. Giotto died in Florence in 1336, aged 70.
Giotto’s contribution to Western art was nothing short of revolutionary. He marked the turning-point between the middle ages and that classical flowering of human virtues that was the Renaissance.

Giotto And The 14th Century: The most sovereign master of painting
At the Vittoriano until 29 June
Via San Pietro in Carcere (Fori Imperiali)
Opening hours:
Monday to Thursday 9:30 – 19:30
Friday and Saturday 9:30 – 23:30
Sunday 9:30 – 20:30
Tickets: 10 euros
Information: tel. 06/6780664