More art from our discussion, April 25 - Giotto

On the threshold of the Renaissance: Giotto

Giotto di Bondone (1266 – 337), better known simply as Giotto, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence. He is the first in a line of great artists who contributed to the Italian Renaissance.

A 13th-century contemporary of Giotto wrote that he was "the most sovereign master of painting in his time, who drew all his figures and their postures according to nature.”  In the late 16th century a biographer described Giotto as making a decisive break with the prevalent Byzantine (two-dimensional) style, initiating "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."

Giotto's masterwork is the decoration of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, completed around 1305. This fresco cycle depicts the life of the Virgin and the life of Christ.  It is regarded as one of the supreme masterpieces of the Early Renaissance.

The birth of Jesus

The raising of Lazarus

The Crucifixion

Lamenting angels

The Resurrection

The Ascension

Join us next week, May 2

as we travel to Assisi

to see Giotto’s frescoes of St. Francis

Francis preaches to the birds

Why does Bob Pelfrey calls Francis "a living work of art"?

Although he is mentioned only once in Saving Paradise (see p. 310), Francis was in his own time – and still is in our time – a significant image of the Christian life.