Giotto

Giotto di Bondone (* 1266 in Vespignano at Florence; † January 8, 1337 in Florence), also known as Giotto, was an Italian painter. He is regarded as the ultimate trailblazer of the Italian Renaissance ( Renaissance ).

Life

Through sources is evidence that Giotto has grown up as the son of a blacksmith Bondone in Florence. Most experts are of the view that Giotto was his real name. Others say that this is a short form of Ambrogio ( Ambrogiotto ) or Angelo ( Angiolotto ).

His life witness to the 1450 written Commentaries ( Artist Stories ) Lorenzo Ghiberti, which were edited by Giorgio Vasari middle of the 16th century and so gained notoriety. There is reported Giotto grew up as a poor boy in Vespignano in Mugello ( near Florence) and was discovered by the painter Cimabue while drawing his sheep on a rock while he was careful. Here he had so faithfully drawn that about amazed even experienced artists. These reports are based on the idea of the Renaissance, after which artistic geniuses are born as such.

Probably Giotto joined as an apprentice in Cimabue's workshop. He soon received orders not only from Florence. Pope Benedict XII. brought him to Rome, where he was for ten years; also King Robert of Naples took him into his service. He eventually became famous as an architect and sculptor, was known as esthete and poet. The writer Cennino Cennini admired him as a conqueror of the " maniera Greca / byzantina " and praised his technique. The recognition of his contemporaries, was also expressed in material success from: Giotto was one of the notables, he owned properties in Florence and in Rome.

After 1320 he returned to Florence, where he maintained a flourishing economic workshop in the series. 1334 he was a senior architect at Florence Cathedral. Meanwhile Campanile bears his name, although his successor ( he witnessed the completion no longer self ) significantly differed from his plans. Giotto died in 1337 while working on a final judgment in the Bargello Chapel in Florence.

Giotto is also used by Boccaccio in The Decameron ( Day 6, 5 story) and mentioned by Dante Alighieri in his "Divine Comedy "; with two he was a friend. The poet Petrarch possessed a Virgin and Child by Giotto and expressed his conviction, any art connoisseur had to be carried away by her. Even Michelangelo can be of Giotto's " Ascension of St. John " in Santa Croce in Florence encourage, as a study of his hand pointing.

Performance

A Künstleranekdote says about Giotto that this one day at a work of art of his master Cimabue painted a small fly, which really looked so deceptively that Cimabue tried several times, they fortzuscheuchen before he realized the illusion. Cimabue should then have been of the opinion that Giotto had surpassed him. The fly was a symbol of artistic progress.

Giotto's entire body of work dealt with religious themes. He is considered " the real founder of Italian painting, especially the Tuscan fresco painting. Both in the technology, " he used while the fig milk and yolk ( in the secco painting) as well as in color hand signals, he joined as an innovator, and then it gave the colors brightness and clarity ... " ( as Meyers encyclopedia of 1888). as the most important aspects of his work, however, the high naturalness and vivacity of his characters are, as well as the preparation of perspective.

He overcame the iconographic norms of Byzantine painting, which had for generations influenced the painters of the West. He initiated the development, which eventually led to the for nachgotische art in Italy ( Renaissance ) resulted in typical realism. " Giotto now was the one who was oriented to the present and real way ... the worldly gains space and spread, as well as Giotto in the sense of his time to burlesque next to the pathetic conceded a point " (Hegel).

While two-dimensional figures were characteristic of the conventional paintings that were arranged as symbols in front of a decorated with symbols -scale background, Giotto turned plastically modeled individuals in a perspective space, the relationships with each other entertained. As he endowed his characters with width and drapery (as it had already done in Bamberg, Magdeburg and in Naumburg Cathedral, the sculptor ), he naturally gave them acting volume and weight. This can already the Crucifixion in the Santa Maria Novella in Florence - one of his early works - clearly. According to Vasari, his portrayal of St. Francis was in Basilica of San Francesco Assisi (see figure) some critics even natural ( and therefore secular ) advised.

Giotto's masterpiece ( and best preserved ) is probably the great cycle of frescoes in the Cappella degli Scrovegni all ' Arena ( Scrovegni Chapel ) in Padua, which consists of more than 100 scenes from the life of Mary and Jesus' life, especially the Passion story, and was created from 1304 to 1306. Giotto painted there also elements of the architecture, the viewer niches pretend ( trompe l'oeil ), in which allegorical figures appear to be. Masaccio and Michelangelo were directly affected them.

A famous scene from this cycle is the Adoration of the Magi, in which a comet- like star floats in the sky (probably next to the Bayeux Tapestry, one of the earliest depictions of Halley's comet, which was seen a few years earlier with the naked eye).

The " Ognissanti Madonna" in the Uffizi ( see Figure ) also comes from this period and is the only major panel painting of Giotto, which has been preserved.

It is also noteworthy that before the time of Giotto's frescoes in the Cappella degli Scrovegni in Padua sky was rarely painted blue and the color blue in general extremely sparse was used. This is at least partly due to a lack of affordable blue pigments; ground lapis lazuli, which began Giotto for his fresco cycle was incredibly expensive and came from " beyond the sea" (hence " ultramarine " called ).

At its contemporaries Duccio di Buoninsegna in Siena extol taking part human, individual expression. Giotto, however, gave the viewers of his works a sense of palpability and depth in space. He it was logical that, with the times turned away from the traditional gold background and the sky above the landscape painted blue. He also made the first serious attempts to use foreshortening in landscapes and buildings representations.

The performance of Giotto is unique in its time; only two generations later were artists of the early Renaissance as Andrea Orcagna, Altichiero da build Zevio or Masaccio to he launched development.

In some works it is still controversial whether they can be attributed to Giotto; This applies for example to the legend Francis in Assisi. Some works are now largely viewed as works from the workshop of Giotto.

After one of the many legends that have grown up around Giotto, he has an emissary of the Pope, who wanted to have a sample of your work, otherwise shown as a drawn out free hand circle, which can not have been better with a compass can customize ( " Giotto O ").

Works

• Navicella, destroyed mosaic cycle in the atrium of the Old St. Peter's Basilica in Rome ( 1298 )
• Panel cross in Santa Maria Novella ( 1300 )
• Fresco cycle in the Cappella degli Scrovegni in Padua (see The Dream of Joachim ) ( 1305 )
• Cycle of frescoes in the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi ( disputed)
• Frescoes in the Peruzzi and Bardi Chapel ( 1320 ), the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence
• Design for the Campanile of Florence Cathedral