Giotto Di Bondones Style and Technique

Giotto Di Bondones Style and TechniqueBriefly outline the characteristics of Giottos style and hit the books the impact of his works on 14th-century Italian ArtGiotto was a Florentine mountain lion and architect who was recognized as an artistic genius and protagonist during the Italian Renaissance. For artist Giorgio Vasari the great biographer of Italian Renaissance artists the pertly art had its birth with Giotto1. Giotto lived and worked at a time when society was exploring and testing the boundaries of medieval traditions and institutions. This is reflected in his religious subjects where the earthly, full-blooded energy for which he was so famous was to spark the beginnings of artistic naturalism and humanism.For Vasari, Giottos work represents a period when painting woke from its long faithfulness to the Greeks. As Hale saysthe stiffness of the Byzantine style gave way to something like grace, figures began to cast shadows and to be foreshortened, their drapery revealed movement and their faces reflected feeling, fear, hope, anger or love. 2These characteristics argon reflected in one of Giottos earliest works, Madonna and Child, where the child, although now lost, is affectionately clasping the Madonnas hand, with its other hand outstretched to her face. The Madonnas eyes get hold of those of the viewer with an elongated stare. Both of these qualities reflect Giottos desire to express human sentiment and his interest in the communication of feeling. Giotto also experiments with form so that the straight alignment of the Madonnas features are juxtaposed against the shape of her gown which flows down and away from her face.Giotto is famous for his frescoes at Assisi where he perpetuated a new use of space and colour. For example, The Doctors of the Church sets portraits within areas framed by extravagantly decorative geometric, figurative, and floral motifs.3 In The Scenes from the Life of St. Francis the strong portrayal of animals, plants, flowe rs, pottery and rocks are integrated into the human scenarios so that the two become integral to one another. In St. Francis Giving his Mantle to a Poor Knight the red of the gymnastic horses robe is seen on the back of the mule and in the buildings and landscapes of the background. This is suggestive of Giottos desire to unify different elements of his paintings a theme which was to continue into the trends of the fourteenth century. Indeed in his frescoes at Padua (1302-5) where he painted the lives of Christ and the stark(a) in the private chapel of Enrico Scrovegni, Paduas richest citizen, his fusion between figures and space and his aim of them as a single coherent unit4 is taken to a new extreme. A section of The Last Judgement shows Enrico Scrovegni offering a ride of the chapel to Mary, who stands beside a saint and an angel. The gift symbolises Enrico seeking penitence for his fathers sin of usury.5 This arrangement reflects mans communication with God, and in plough the unification of the material and the spiritual. In The Last Judgement, where Christ sits surrounded by an aura, Giotto places figures at the nucleus of their world representing mankinds place at the centre of history and his unique individuality, which was to become a fundamental of the humanist vision during the fourteenth century.Fourteenth century Italian art was intrinsically linked to the policy-making developments occurring during the time. Giotto was certainly one of the first to assert a style based on observations of nature rather than the upholding of medieval traditions, and during a time when city states were decorous more independent, and democracies were governed by guilds associations of merchants, bankers, artisans, and other professionals6 this form of artistic freedom was welcomed by those who had democratic or political influence. Giottos decorating of the family chapels of the wealthiest citizens of Florence and Padua suggests that art was seen as an ult imate esthetical representation of virtue and power. In S. Croce Giotto painted the life of St. Francis in the Bardi chapel and those of the two St. Johns in the Peruzzi chapel. The Bardi and Peruzzi were the two greatest banker families of Florence and court bankers of the kings of England and Naples, to the latter of whom Giotto was court painter between 1328-32.7 These were important developments for fourteenth century art as at Peruzzi Giotto incorporates portrait heads, presumably of the Peruzzi family. As Antal phrases itit was the wealthiest citizens of Florence who were the first to be represented, outside a fresco or religious painting, in almost wholly independent portraits, though still for the time being inside the same frame.8 Later artwork was to on the whole separate portraits from religious paintings so that the individual could be represented as independent of, but still connected to, the spiritual realm.Fourteenth-century frescoes reveal that individualism was gr eatly esteemed in the Italian city-republics, and a developing trend for freedom of expression can be seen in Giottos pupils and successors such as Taddeo Gaddi. The lives of Christ, the Virgin and the Saints were the subjects of many important paintings and sculptures commissioned at the time. However, although these subjects continue those used by Giotto, his style began to be adapted by his pupils. His idea of a painting as a single unified whole was taken further by incorporating a greater diversity of individual elements within that whole. As Antal explains itThe painters abandoned Giottos centripetal emphasis in order to obtain a fuller narrative the number of figures is greater, they are individualised and more vehement in their movements, more fiery or more charming sometimes landscape predominates, and the architecture is richer and more Gothic.9However, Giottos work was still to prove pivotal to the changes occurring during the fourteenth century. By mid-century, Italy see a surge of artistic output which integrated new ideals into earlier modes of representation. Over time, figures became more naturalistic, and the linear and angular quality of clothing on figures became softened. As mentioned above, Giottos volumetric figures of Madonna and of Christ express these qualities nearly a century earlier. These works were to influence major fourteenth century artists such as Michelangelo and Raphael. As seen in Madonna and Child Giotto experimented with the form of the figure and created a shadow effect, adding three dimensionality to the painting. This solution to creating the illusion of solidity to his figures was developed by the afterwards artists who are famous for their exquisite eye for detail.With Giotto, the two dimensional world of thirteenth-century Italian painting was transformed into an analogue for the real world.10 It was the simplicity of his style and his hyponymy of illusion which captivated the audiences of his time. As Bernard Berenson puts itWith the simplest means, with almost rudimentary swingy and shade, and functional line, he contrives to render, out of all the possible outlines, out of all the possible variations of light and shade that a given figure may have, only those that we must isolate for special attention when we are actually realizing it.11Giotto was to lay the foundations of a thorough artistic movement in fourteenth century Italy. Later artists developed the simplicity of his use of line, form and three-dimensionality. His bold use of colour and composition was to pass a wealth of changes in the styles and tastes of fourteenth century Italian art, and his contributions to the history of aesthetics are perhaps some of the most comprehensive in history.BibliographyAntal, F., 1947, Florentine Painting and Its Social Background the Bourgeois Republic before Cosimo De Medicis Advent to Power XIV and Early XV Centuries. London K. PaulBennett, A., 1999, Giotto. London Dorling KindersleyBe renson, B., 1953, The Italian Painters of the Renaissance. Phaidon New YorkHale, J.R., 1954, England and the Italian Renaissance The Growth of Interest in Its History and Art. London Faber and FaberOsmond, S.F., 1998, The Renaissance brainpower Mirrored in Art. World and I, Vol. 13http//www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/iptg/hd_iptg.htm. moreover ReadingHenderson, J., and Verdon, T., (eds), 1990, Christianity and the Renaissance Image and Religious Imagination in the Quattrocento. Syracuse Syracuse University PressMartindale, A., 1969, The Complete Paintings of Giotto. London Weidenfeld and Nicholson.Murray, L., and Murray, P., 1963, The Art of the Renaissance. New York PraegerFootnotes1 Osmond, S.F., 1998, The Renaissance Mind Mirrored in Art. World and I, Vol. 13. p.1.2 Hale, J.R., 1954, England and the Italian Renaissance The Growth of Interest in Its History and Art. London Faber and Faber, p.60.3 Bennett, A., 1999, Giotto. London Dorling Kindersley, p.25.4 Ibid, p.66.5 Ibid, p.71.6 Osmond, S.F., 1998, The Renaissance Mind Mirrored in Art. World and I, Vol. 13.7 Antal, F., 1947, Florentine Painting and Its Social Background the Bourgeois Republic before Cosimo De Medicis Advent to Power XIV and Early XV Centuries. London K. Paul, p.159.8 Ibid, p.159.9 Ibid, p.174.10 http//www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/iptg/hd_iptg.htm.11 Berenson, B., 1953, The Italian Painters of the Renaissance. Phaidon New York, p.44.