INTRODUCTION TO HUMANITIES

Introduction to Humanities



Introduction to Humanities

Introduction

Giotto di Bondone (1266/67-1337) - Italian painter, sculptor and architect of the era Protorenessansa. With the name of Giotto associated change in the development of Italian painting, her break with the medieval artistic canons and traditions of Italian-Byzantine art of the XIII century (Ruskin, 2005). Giotto's frescoes of the church several Italian cities: Florence, Padua, Assisi. Also known as tracks by the altar. Giotto managed the construction of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and the city walls of Florence (Ruskin, 2005). Giotto's Campanile attributed to the project (bell tower) of Florence Cathedral. Creativity Giotto had an enormous influence on the development of Italian art of the Early and High Renaissance.

Discussion

First of the great Italian painters, active in Florence. He decorated chapels and churches in Assisi, Rome, Padua, Florence, and Naples with frescoes and panel paintings. Because little of his life and few of his works are documented, attributions and a stylistic chronology of his paintings remain problematic and often highly speculative (Ruskin, 2005). His works in Rome include the heavily restored mosaic of Christ Walking on the Water over the entrance to St. Peter's Basilica, and an altarpiece from St. Peter's, now in the Vatican Museum. In Padua, his fresco of the Last Judgment decorates the western wall of the Arena Chapel, and the rest of the chapel is covered with his narrative frescoes featuring scenes from the lives of the Virgin Mary and Christ (Ruskin, 2005). Later in his career he executed frescoes in four chapels in the church of Santa Croce in Florence, two of which survive. In 1334 he was appointed surveyor of Florence Cathedral; his design for the campanile was altered after his death. The most important extant panel painting attributed to him is The Madonna in Glory (c. 1305 - 10). He achieved great fame in his lifetime, and he is considered the father of European painting for breaking with the impersonal stylizations of Byzantine art and introducing new ideals of naturalism and humanity, three-dimensional space, and three-dimensional form (Pihlajamaki, 2004). The course of Italian painting was dominated by his students and followers. His work points to the innovations of the Renaissance style that developed a century later.

In his own time and place he had an unrivalled reputation as the best painter and as an innovator, superior to all his predecessors and he became the first post-Classical artist whose fame extended beyond his lifetime and native city (Pihlajamaki, 2004). This was partly the consequence of the rich literary culture of two of the cities where he worked, Padua and Florence. Writing on art in Florence was pioneered by gifted authors and, although not quite art criticism, it involved the comparison of local artists in terms of quality (Pihlajamaki, 2004). The most famous single appreciation is found in Dante's verses (Purgatory X) of 1315 or earlier. Exemplifying the transience of fame, first with poets and manuscript illuminators, Dante then remarked that the fame of Cimabue, who had supposed ...