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| 18th Century Sculpture of Giotto Photo courtesy of McPig on Flickr Creative Commons |
In Pergatorio,
Dante stated, “Once Cimabue thought to hold the field/ As painter; Giotto now
is all the rage,/ Dimming the lustre of the others fame.” Vasari clearly felt
the same, as he states in his Lives of
the Artist that “Giotto truly eclipsed Cimabue’s fame just as a great light
eclipses a much smaller one”. Art historians have carried on this belief for
centuries as Gardner’s Art through the Ages
calls Giotto the first Renaissance painter and refers to him as, “A pioneer
in pursuing a naturalistic approach to representation based on observation, he
made a much more radical break with the past”.
Just one glimpse of a fresco
from the Arena Chapel and it’s easy to see why Giotto has dimmed the fame of
Cimabue as well as why he is considered the father of Renaissance painting. There
are also examples of his groundbreaking style in his works that can be found
right here in Florence.
One of such examples is Giotto’s Badia Polyptych. Originally designed for
the Badia church, the work is now housed in the Uffizi gallery. This work is a
series of connected wooden panels depicting Mary in the center with baby Jesus
and various saints on either side, including John the Evangelist and Peter.
While still focusing on the Virgin Mary and using the golden background
utilized by medieval artists and his supposed teacher, Cimabue, Giotto has
given each of his figures even more humanized, worldly features. A work like
this clearly establishes Giotto as the connecting thread between the Medieval
and Renaissance periods of art.
Bibliographical Notes: The Dante and Vasari
quotes can be found on page 13 of the Oxford World’s Classics edition of
Giorgio Vasari’s The Lives of the Artists.
The quote from Gardner’s Art Through the
Ages can be found on page 407 of the 14th backpack edition,
Renaissance and Baroque
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