GIOTTO DI BONDONE

Giotto di Bondone

Giotto di Bondone

Outline

Introduction: Stylistic tendencies at the starting of the 14th 100 years directed at larger realism. The abstraction and poetic attractiveness of the Italo-Byzantine method had come to a climax in the paintings performed by Cimabue in Florence and Duccio in Siena.

Discussion: There is no agreement on what constitutes Giotto's early work. Scholars are split up, and the argument is vigorous over what Giotto may have decorated before he performed the frescoes in the Arena Chapel. The primary inquiry is, what did Giotto decorate in Assisi?

Conclusion: There is, furthermore, general affirmation that Giotto's function in the St. Francis cycle was that of an expert overseeing a large shop of assistants.

Annotated Bibliography



Introduction

This is the summary of the life of Giotto may be deduced from articles and scholarly sources. At the time of his death in 1337 he was said to be 70 years old. Traditionally his birthplace is granted as Colle di Vespignano in Mugello, though some scholars now accept as factual that he was a native of Florence. According to a legend noted by Lorenzo Ghiberti in his Commentaries (Maginnis 1997 28), the decorator Cimabue found out Giotto. The account states that while travelling in the rural areas Cimabue came upon a shepherd drawing with chalk on a flat stone. Cimabue was so influenced that he suggested taking the shepherd, Giotto, to Florence and training him in the artist's craft.

Discussion

Giotto's method in the Arena Chapel is easy and direct. The narrative scenes are overridden by numbers which move along the foreground plane before morsels of countryside or architecture. The backgrounds assist to set up the setting without trying to be unquestionable in scale or overly complicated in detail. The components of the setting are generally organised to border and augment the number groups (Ruskin 2005 536). Strong undulating tempos are conceived by the contour of the architecture and countryside, premier the beholder's eye with a nearly irresistible power over the walls. The atmosphere, decorated a deep azure, presents a very good foil for the numbers and settings. The azure of the atmosphere can be read as the image plane, therefore impelling the numbers ahead in order that they appear to enlarge off the exterior of the partition itself and convey the actors of the devout drama into the three-dimensional, corporeal world.

Giotto's frescoes in Padua are the most comprehensive and best-preserved demonstration of his mature style. Some other works from approximately the identical time span have survived. The large Madonna Enthroned, decorated soon after the frescoes in Padua for the Church of Ognissanti, Florence (Uffizi), is unanimously acknowledged as an authentic work by Giotto. Restoration of the decorating, after it had been impaired by a blasting apparatus blast at the Uffizi repository in 1992, supplied farther clues that it was really Giotto's work.

Some scholars designated day it before the Arena Chapel frescoes and other ones as late as 1310 (www.giottodibondone.org). It displays the Madonna and Child seated on a canopied Gothic throne encircled by saints ...