GIOTTO DI BONDONE

born 126667/1276, Vespignano, near Florence died Jan. 8, 1337, Florence Lamentation, fresco by Giotto, c. 130506; in the Arena Chapel, Padua, the most important Italian painter of the 14th century, whose works point to the innovations of the Renaissance style that developed a century later. For almost seven centuries Giotto has been revered as the father of European painting and the first of the great Italian masters. He is believed to have been a pupil of the Florentine painter Cimabue and to have decorated chapels in Assisi, Rome, Padua (see photograph), Florence, and Naples with frescoes and panel paintings in tempera. 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. Additional reading There is a full bibliography, from the 14th century to 1937, in Roberto Salvini, Giotto bibliografia (1938). The earliest important biography is by Giorgio Vasari in his Vite, published in Florence in 1550 and 1568; the 1550 edition has not been translated, but there are many English versions of the 1568 one. Full-scale monographs are Roberto Salvini, Tutta la pittura di Giotto, 2nd ed. (1962; All the Paintings of Giotto, 1963); and Cesare Gnudi, Giotto (1958; Eng. trans. 1959); and special studies include P. Murray, On the Date of Giotto's Birth, in Giotto e il suo tempo (1971); Alastair Smart, The Assisi Problem and the Art of Giotto (1971); Leonetto Tintori, and Millard Meiss, The Painting of the Life of St. Francis in Assisi (1962); James Stubblebine (comp.), Giotto: The Arena Chapel Frescoes (1969); Leonetto Tintori and Eve Borsook, Giotto: The Peruzzi Chapel (1965); and Laurie Schneider, Giotto in Perspective (1974). Major Works: The only works universally accepted as Giotto's are the fresco cycle in Padua, firmly datable in the first decade of the 14th century, and the two chapels in Santa Croce, Florence, which used to be dated around 1320 but, since their cleaning in the 1950s and 1960s, are now placed anywhere in the second or third decade. The only panel painting universally accepted as Giotto's own work is The Madonna in Glory (Ognissanti Madonna; Uffizi, Florence), usually dated c. 130510.The most controversial attribution is the fresco cycle at Assisi, but other important works in this category are the Crucifix in Santa Maria Novella, Florence (c. 12951300); the Dormition of the Virgin (Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin); and the polyptych now in the Museo dell'Opera, Santa Croce, Florence.Works that are certainly from Giotto's shop, not necessarily painted by his own hand, include panels in Bologna's Pinacoteca Nazionale and the Vatican, and others in Boston (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum) and the galleries of London, Munich, New York, and Washington. A fragment of the original mosaic from St. Peter's is now in the church at Boville Ernica, near Rome, and another is in the Vatican Museum.