Giotto di Bondone

[English page]

Peruzzi Altarpiece, about 1309–15, Giotto di Bondone and His Workshop. Tempera and gilded gesso on poplar panel, 41 5/8 x 98 1/2 in. (105.7 x 250.2 cm). North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, GL.60.17.7

http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/florence/introduction.html

 

Giotto di Bondone was celebrated as a pioneering artist during his own lifetime. Even the poet Dante Alighieri acknowledged him to be the leading painter of the day. Artists, writers, and scholars since have characterized his style and its legacy by two main features: an increased naturalism in representing the human figure, and architectural and landscape settings that appear true to life. His work was highly sought within religious communities and banking families, among foreign rulers, and even by the pope. In addition to his work on panel and in fresco, he also designed stained-glass windows and mosaics and oversaw the construction of the Florence Cathedral bell tower and its sculptural program.

In the monumental altarpiece above, which is more than eight feet wide, Giotto depicted the five figures with great attention to natural detail, from realistic facial features to an awareness of the body beneath heavy garments to a profound dignity in posture and gaze. The altarpiece is associated with the Peruzzi family, important bankers in Florence, and their private chapel in the Church of Santa Croce, the major Franciscan foundation in the city.

The Virgin Mary with Saints Thomas Aquinas and Paul, about 1330, Bernardo Daddi. Tempera and gold leaf on panel, 47 7/8 x 44 1/2 in. (121.6 x 113 cm). The J. Paul Getty Museum

Panel painters like Bernardo Daddi and Taddeo Gaddi quickly absorbed Giotto's new methods on both a monumental and a small scale.

In the panel painting at left by Daddi, the Virgin Mary engages the viewer by extending her hand beyond a painted parapet, while smaller figures of Saints Thomas Aquinas and Paul fill the wings of this triptych. Daddi's reliance on Giotto's new naturalism is clear when this painting is compared to Giotto's altarpiece above: each figure seems to have mass and volume and the contours of their bodies appear beneath their garments, similar to Giotto's figures.