Page:Biographical catalogue of the principal Italian painters.djvu/107

 76 GIOTTINO— GIOTTO. have acquired the name of Giottino, from his successful imitation of Giotto ; but it appears, from the old book of Flo- rentine painters, that his name was not Tommaso, but Giotto ; he was the son of Stefano, who had been a scholar of Giotto. Vasari commends Giottino for many excellences — for the grace of his figures, the correctness of his design, the beautj of his heads, and for the harmony of his colouring. Works, Florence, the UflBzj, the Dead Christ ; the two Holy Women ; and Nicodemus. Santa Groce, in the Bardi Chapel, scenes from the Life of San Silvestro, and, according to Vasari, at Assisi, in San Francesco (in the lower church), the Coronation of the Virgin; but this is attributed by Fea to a Frate Martino (1347). There are some remains of Giottino's work here in the chapel of San Nicoolo. (Fa* sari.) GIOTTO, called also Giotto di BoNDONE, b, at Vespignano, in 1276, d. at Florence, Jan. 8, 1336 ; or rather, according to modem reckoning, 1337. Tuscan School. The position of Gi- otto in the histoiy of modem art is most important, for though his master Gimabue was an unquestionably great painter for his time, he was unable to oast off the fetters of Greek, or medie- val, traditions and custom ; this re- formation was completely effected by Giotto, who wholly forsook the Byzan- tine style. His drawing, however, is hard, and he paid little attention to perspective or chiaroscuro, and his colouring is feeble ; but in composition and expression he made such advance as to mark by his works the era of a new epoch of art. Giotto was also the first real portrait-painter among the Italians. His close observance of Nature gave him the faculty of repre- senting individualities, and he could equally well delineate, also, with gran- deur and dramatic power, when re- quired by the subject. His landscape backgrounds are natural. He was an able architect, and in his pictures he ornamented his buildings with charac- teristic taste, colouring them red, azure, and yellow, according to the polychro- mic system, whether by colour or vari- coloured marbles, prevailing at his time. The practice of foreshortening was derived from his example. Of his actual portraits some very interesting examples were discovered in 1840, in the palace of the Podesta, at Florence, including that of his friend Dante. He improved the art of working mo- saic ; and, as an architect, the Campa- nile adjoining the Duomo of Florence, built after his designs, is an example of his ability. The story of Giotto is more like romance than reality; ha was a shep- herd boy, and one day while tending his father's sheep, he was surprised, in the act of drawing one of them with chalk on the ground, by the great painter Cimabue, who was so much struck with the extraordinary ability displayed by the boy, that he took him home with him to Florence to make a painter of him. Giotto's works are stiU sufficiently numerous to admit of a thorough appreciation of his powers, though many have perished. Some, as the Seven Sacraments in the chmrch of the Incoronata, at Naples, have been wrongly attributed to Giotto, who died sixteen years before that church was built : and nearly eleven before the Marriage, introduced in illustration of the sacrament of matrimony, was cele- brated. The Boyal Chapel at Naples, painted by Giotto for King Bobert, and noticed by Petrarch, was in the Castell Nuovo. Also the Last Supper, in Santa Croce, is now attributed to his scholar, Taddeo Gaddi. Giotto has the credit of having introduced pure fr^seo- painting, but 'this is likewise doubt- ful. It is a singular fatality in