Giotto, The Gothic Giant

The Kiss of Judas by Giotto

Prior to the Renaissance and during the last three centuries of the Middle Ages art was produced chiefly for religious purposes - the Gothic Period. The Gothic masters created images of great spiritual purity and intensity. But there was one man who transformed the art of the period. Giotto di Bondone, known simply as Giotto, created a revolutionary approach to form and his way of depicting realistic space so that his figures are in scale in relation to his buildings and surrounding landscape marked a great leap forward in the story of painting.

Giotto was born in 1267 in a village near Florence, the son of a small landed farmer. At the age of 12 he became a pupil of Cimabue, the last great painter in the Byzantine tradition. He was short and homely, had a great wit and was a practical joker. He married and had six children. Unlike most artists of his time he saved his money and was a rich man at the time of his death in 1337.

In common with other artists of his day, Giotto lacked the technical knowledge of anatomy that later painters learned but he had a grasp of human emotion and what was significant in human life. By concentrating on these essentials he created compelling pictures of people under stress, of people caught up in crisis. His approach to the human experience remains valid today.

Giotto's frescoes in the Arena Chapel in Padua are his greatest surviving work and decorate the the complete interior of the chapel. One of the most famous, The Kiss of Judas, reveals his startling power to organize the excitement of a scene around a central image. Each actor is alive and functioning. Torches blaze and weapons whirl. But at the heart there is only a tragic stillness as Jesus looks into the mock-friendly eyes of His disciple Judas, and truth confronts falsehood with sorrowful love. What a moving scene!

Giotto's skill and mastery of emotion launches the next generation of aritsts into a whole new atmosphere - the Italian Renaissance.

Just paint it!