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Giotto di Bondone the Father of the Italian Renaissance

Navicella. After Giotto. Copy in oils made in 1628 of Giotto's mosaic of 1305-1313. 1628. oil on canvas. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

By Art in Tuscany

June 27, 2025
3:27 pm
Los Angeles, CA

Much of Giotto’s biography and artistic development must be deduced from the evidence of surviving works (a large portion of which cannot be attributed to him with certainty) and stories that originate for the most part from the late 14th century on. Vasari, the historian of Florence, tells the touching story of how the renowned Cimabue, strolling out into the country, came upon the youngster scraping upon a rock the outlines of one of the sheep which he had been set to watch, and how the master had been so delighted with the boy’s talent that he had immediately arranged to bring him to Florence as his pupil. But more accurate historians, with no cause to be overpatriotic for beloved Florence, have rejected this story as fable. In view

Giotto. Possibly Paolo Uccello. from 1500 until 1550. tempera on panel. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Vasari, the historian of Florence, tells the touching story of how the renowned Cimabue, strolling out into the country, came upon the youngster scraping upon a rock the outlines of one of the sheep which he had been set to watch, and how the master had been so delighted with the boy’s talent that he had immediately arranged to bring him to Florence as his pupil. But more accurate historians, with no cause to be overpatriotic for beloved Florence, have rejected this story as fable. In view of the innovations in painting effected by Giotto and his completely different point of view, it seems more reasonable to suppose that his talents were unspoiled by his celebrated predecessor.

Born in 1267, Giotto must have been active before the last decade of thirteenth century. The date of Giotto’s birth can be taken as either 1266/67 or 1276, and the 10 years’ difference is of fundamental importance in assessing his early developmentand is crucial to the problem of the attribution of the frescoes in the Church of San Francesco, in Assisi, which, if indeed by Giotto, are his great early works. It is known that Giotto died on Jan. 8, 1337 (1336, Old Style); this was recorded at the time in the Villani chronicle.

Lamentation. Giotto. 1305. fresco and fresco painting. Scrovegni Chapel (Arena Chapel), Padua (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Giotto has always been assumed to have been the pupil of Cimabue.Two independent traditions, each differing on the particular circumstances, assert this, and it is probably correct. Furthermore, Cimabue’s style was, in certain respects, so similar to Giotto’s in intention that a connection seems inescapable. Cimabue was the most outstanding painter in Italy at the end of the 13th century.

it seems almost certain that Giotto began his remarkable development with Cimabue, inspired by his strength of drawing and his ability to incorporate dramatic tension into his works. On the other hand, whatever Giotto may have learned from Cimabue, it is clear that, even more than the sculptor Nicola Pisano about 30 years earlier, he succeeded in an astonishing innovation that originated in his own genius—a true revival of classical ideals and an expression in art of the new humanity that St. Francis had in the early 13th century brought to religion.

copy of giotto’s nacelle. Parri Spinelli. After Giotto. 1320s. drawing. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Giotto is regarded as the founder of the central tradition of Western painting because his work broke free from the stylizations of Byzantine art, introducing new ideals of naturalism and creating a convincing sense of pictorial space. His momentous achievement was recognized by his contemporaries. “He converted the art of painting from Greek to Latin and brought in the modern era” – this is Cennino Cennini’s synthesis fifty years after Giotto’s death, underscoring the revolutionary character of Giotto’s painting, and Dante praised him in a famous passage of The Divine Comedy, where he said he had surpassed his master Cimabue.’ The late-16th century biographer Giorgio Vasari says of him: “[H]e made a decisive break with the crude traditional 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.”

Legend of St Francis, Exorcism of the Demons at Arezzo. Giotto. Basilique Assise. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons )

The decoration of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (between 1303-1305) has been universally recognized as the most significant and most paradigmatic creation of Giotto and one of the capital events in the history of the European painting. If we look at the contents of his artistic revolution, we have to agree that the first manifestations are present in the decoration of the Assisi Upper Basilica.
Completed in 1305 for the Enrico Scrovegni family in Padua, Italy, the frescoes adorning the walls and ceiling of the chapel relate a complex, emotional narrative on the lives of Mary and Jesus.

Giotto di Bondone, Scenes from the Life of Christ, Resurrection (detail), Cappella degli Scrovegni all’Arena, Padua. (Photo: travelingintuscany.com)

Dividing his time between his job as chief architect of the Duomo of Florence (the design of the belltower belongs to Giotto) and the many prestigious commissions (the Peruzzi Chapel, the Bardi Chapel (after 1317) also illustrate Giotto’s radical innovations.

St Francis Giving his Mantle to a Poor Man. Giotto . 1223. painting. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

It is very probable that Giotto has worked in Assisi about ten years earlier than in Padua, that is to say, around 1290 or a little later.
The concept of space formulated for the first time in Assisi was already known to the ancient Greeks and Romans, but had been lost in Medieval times. This is not just a new way of painting. The idea of an illusionary reconstruction of a three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface also implies that the reality perceived through one’s senses acquires a new artistic meaning.