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Giotto di Bondone

Those who are involved – even encyclopedic – in the history of Art; know Giotto di Bondone (1267-1337), or simply Giotto, as an important Italian painter born in Florence.

Giotto di Bondone 5But it may be much more. The Artist who transformed the Word of the founders of the minions of the ministry:

Saint Peter Damianos, Saint Anselm of Kantavriga, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Dominic, etc., as well as that of Saint Thomas Aquinas, placed Man in the spotlight.

Christian teaching from the early centuries of the Patristic period proclaimed that Christ is man and God. But in the early Middle Ages – the same is true today in Orthodox Christianity – the divine nature of Christ prevailed. As religious art testifies. Orthodox images do not represent Jesus as much as Christ, with the halo as a symbol of holiness and the face infinitely serene. This person does not bear the sign of the anguish of death, the representation only shows the glory of the resurrection.

Giotto’s genius

Giotto’s genius made an overshoot that was supposed to change the history of Art and consequently of Thought. He represents Christ as a suffering man, emphasizing his humanity. Man and history are no Giotto di Bondone 2longer out, but within the image, whose limits are abolished for the sake of a living humanity. Emotions overflow.

Gombrich [The Chronicle of Art] considers that: painting is more than just a substitute for the written discourse. We are watching the real event as if playing it in the theater.

Giotto casts off the magical influence of Byzantine conservatism, abandons the abstract idealizations of Byzantine painting and Gothic appeal to decoration. He integrates the figures into a defined space and restores their human existence. The episode occurs in front of the viewer’s eyes, observing in moments of extreme expressive despair dominating a surprising objectivity, superior tranquility.

Giotto di Bondone 3The vision of the believer is now transferred to his life. There is a tendency to unravel from ecclesiastical guardianship. It consolidates the decentralization of nature and the emergence of the sensible world as a world of autonomous existence. Man learns to enjoy earthly life, and departs from the doctrine of contempt of the worlds.

concept of perspective

It introduces the concept of perspective: it creates the illusion of depth on a flat surface. The three-dimensional representation will be the direction for all subsequent artists to follow.

A new era has elapsed

 

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