Plate VI: The Resurrection
Giotto
Arena Chapel, Padua
Photography by Raya

Plate VII: The Death of St. Francis
Giotto
Bardi Chapel, Church of S. Croce, Florence
Photography by Anderson

Plate VIII: The Birth of St. John the Baptist
Giotto
Peruzzi Chapel, Church of S. Croce, Florence
Photography by Anderson

Plate IX: The Feast of Herod
Giotto
Peruzzi Chapel, Church of S. Croce, Florence
Photography by Anderson

Plate X: The Raising of Drusiana
Giotto
Peruzzi Chapel, Church of S. Croce, Florence
Photography by Anderson

Portrait of Giotto
Paolo Uccello
Louvre, Paris

This portrait of Giotto was painted in the first half of the fifteenth century by Paolo Uccello, a Florentine artist. It is a detail of a picture containing five heads, representing, besides Giotto, Uccello himself, Donatello, Brunelleschi, and Manetti. Vasari took the engraving for his biography of Giotto from this likeness, which was probably based upon some older portrait of the artist. He is here represented in a red cloak and head covering; and it would seem that Uccello's brush has somewhat flattered him, for we are told that he was "singularly ill-favored" in outward appearance.

MASTERS IN ART

Giotto di Bondone

BORN 1266(?): DIED 1337
FLORENTINE SCHOOL

JULIA CARTWRIGHT — 'THE PAINTERS OF FLORENCE'

"In a village of Etruria," writes Ghiberti, the oldest historian of the Florentine Renaissance, "Painting took her rise." In other words, Giotto di Bondone[1] was born, between 1265 and 1270, at Colle, in the Commune of Vespignano, a village of the Val Mugello fourteen miles from Florence. There the boy, who had been called Angiolo, after his grandfather, and went by the nickname of Angiolotto, or Giotto, kept his father's flocks on the grassy slopes of the Apennines, and was found one day by Cimabue, as he rode over the hills, drawing a sheep with a sharp stone upon a rock. Full of surprise at the child's talent for drawing, the great painter asked him if he would go back with him to Florence; to which both the boy and his father, a poor peasant named Bondone, gladly agreed. Thus, at ten years old, Giotto was taken straight from the sheepfolds and apprenticed to the first painter in Florence. Such is the story told by Ghiberti and confirmed by Leonardo da Vinci, who, writing half a century before Vasari, remarks that Giotto took nature for his guide, and began by drawing the sheep and goats which he herded on the rocks.

Another version of the story of Giotto's boyhood is that he was apprenticed to a wool-merchant of Florence, but that instead of going to work he spent his time in watching the artists in Cimabue's shop; upon which his father applied to the master who consented to teach the boy painting. The natural vivacity and intelligence of the young student soon made him a favorite in Cimabue's workshop, while his extraordinary aptitude for drawing became every day more apparent. The legends of his marvelous skill, the stories of the fly that Cimabue vainly tried to brush off his picture, of the round O which he drew before the pope's envoy with one sweep of his pencil, are proofs of the wonder and admiration which Giotto's attempts to follow nature more closely excited among his contemporaries. This latter story is told by Vasari as follows: "The pope sent one of his courtiers to Tuscany to ascertain what kind of man Giotto might be, and what were his works; that pontiff then proposing to have certain paintings executed in the Church of St. Peter. The messenger spoke first with many artists in Siena; then, having received designs from them, he proceeded to Florence, and repaired one morning to the workshop where Giotto was occupied with his labors. He declared the purpose of the pope, and finally requested to have a drawing that he might send it to his holiness. Giotto, who was very courteous, took a sheet of paper and a pencil dipped in a red color, then, resting his elbow on his side to form a sort of compass, with one turn of the hand he drew a circle, so perfect and exact that it was a marvel to behold. This done, he turned smiling to the courtier, saying, 'Here is your drawing.' 'Am I to have nothing more than this?' inquired the latter, conceiving himself to be jested with. 'That is enough and to spare,' returned Giotto. 'Send it with the rest, and you will see if it will not be recognized.' The messenger, unable to obtain anything more, went away very ill-satisfied and fearing that he had been fooled. Nevertheless, having despatched the other drawings to the pope with the names of those who had done them he sent that of Giotto also, relating the mode in which he had made his circle, without moving his arm and without compasses; from which the pope, and such of the courtiers as were well versed in the subject, perceived how far Giotto surpassed all the other painters of his time."

No doubt the boldness and originality of his genius soon led Giotto to abandon the purely conventional style of art then in use, and to seek after a more natural and lifelike form of expression. And early in his career he was probably influenced by the example of the sculptor Giovanni Pisano, who was actively engaged on his great works in Tuscany and Umbria at this time. The earliest examples of Giotto's style that remain to us are some small panels at Munich; but a larger and better-known work is the 'Madonna Enthroned,' in the Academy at Florence,