Page:Cyclopedia of painters and paintings (IA cyclopediaofpain02cham).pdf/162

 in the mortuary chapel of the Strozzi, Florence, and in a panel in the Uffizi, the Bewailing of Christ. The last is given in the catalogue to Giottino, but whether it and other works mentioned belong to him or to Maso remains to be proved.—C. & C., Italy, i. 410; Lübke, Gesch. ital. Mal., i. 153; Baldinucci, i. 253; Vasari, ed. Mil., i. 622; W. & W., i. 453.

GIOTTO, born at Colle in the district of Vespignano in 1266; died in Florence, Jan. 8, 1337. Florentine school. Son of a shepherd named Bondone; found drawing sheep upon flat stones, by Cimabue, who, struck with his talent, took him to Florence and taught him to paint. Dante tells in the Divina Commedia (Purgatorio, xi. 93) how the master was outdone by the pupil, who is called the reviver of painting, because he broke loose from Byzantinism and took nature for his guide. In simple and unaffected, although necessarily imperfect, language, he represented scenes from holy writ, legends and allegories, according to the dogmas of the Church; and, though living at a time when art was wholly in her service, worked in a comparatively independent spirit. In his pictures there is no striving after ideal beauty, no attempt at deceptive imitation of natural objects, no difference of handling in the treatment of flesh, drapery, or architecture, and but a scant supply of that technical knowledge which in later times enabled men of infinitely less genius to surpass them in execution, in chiaroscuro, perspective, drawing, and colour. In all these things the apprentices of the next century were Giotto's superiors; though in earnestness, in the power of telling a story with dramatic effect, and in truth of expression, but few of their masters equalled, and still fewer surpassed, him. He worked in many parts of Italy: in Assisi before 1296; in Rome from 1298 to 1300; in Florence from 1300 to 1304; in Padua from 1304 to 1306; later in Rimini, and in Naples, where he painted the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes in the old convent church of S. Chiara (but not the Incoronata frescos), from 1330 to 1333. In the following year he was appointed master of the works at the Duomo, Florence, for which he designed the façade, commenced but afterwards destroyed, and built its exquisite campanile. Giotto's twenty-eight frescos representing scenes from the lives of the Saviour and of St. Francis, in the aisle of the upper church of S. Francesco, Assisi, were probably painted before the ceilings of the lower church (1296), in which he allegorized the virtues of the Franciscans, Poverty, the spouse chosen by St. Francis, Obedience and Chastity, the rules of his Order. In Rome Giotto next decorated the tribune of the church of S. Giorgio in Velabro with frescos, designed the so-called Navicella represented by a mosaic in the portico of St. Peter's, and painted the three panels of a predella now in the sacristy of the canons of St. Peter, representing the Redeemer and Angels, the donor Cardinal Stefaneschi, and the Martyrdoms of St. Peter and St. Paul. The same Apostles, with the Madonna and Saints, appear upon other predella panels in the sacristy. In the Lateran Basilica is a fragment of a fresco by Giotto representing Pope Boniface VIII. proclaiming the opening of the Jubilee in 1300, when Giotto and Dante were in Rome. The frescos of the Palazzo del Podesta or Bargello, Florence, portions of which have been recovered, were painted about 1302 or 1303. As containing the well-known portraits of Dante, and some of his contemporaries, that which represents an incident in the feud of the Bianchi and the Neri factions has a peculiar interest. About 1305, Giotto went to Padua to paint the thirty-eight frescos of the Cappella dell' Arena of Enrico degli Scrovegni. They represent scenes from the lives of Christ and the Virgin, the Last Judgment, and the Virtues and Vices,