Giotto de Bondone
Giotto de Bondone (ca. 1266-1337) of Florence was a painter of frescos and mural who made huge strides in perspective and representing 3-dimensional objects in space. The lighting he used in his painting made for stage-like settings which dramatized the religious scenes he painted. He used shading and highlight to create perspective and volume which can especially be seen in his paintings of the Saint Francis at the Church of San Francesco at Assisi.
The church consists of an upper and lower church that were churches built at different times and combined. The first stone of the Lower Basilica was laid by Pope Gregory IX the day after the canonization of St Francis, on July 17th 1228. The saints body was brought to the unfinished church in secret two years later for fear that tomb raiders would steal his remains at their former resting place at the church of San Giorgio. The date the church was finished was not recorded, but both churches were consecrated in 1253 by Pope Innocent IV.
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| Church Of San Francesco At Assisa - http://www.wga.hu/tours/giotto/index1.html |
In the church there are 28 scenes depicting the legend of St. Francis, twenty-five of which were painted by Giotto. The scenes were commissioned by the Franciscan General Giovanni di Muro for the Upper Church of San Francesco at Assisi.
In the fourth scene painted by Giotto, St. Francis is seen in the church of San Damiano and the crucifix spoke to him telling him to restore his “house, which is in danger of collapsing.” Giotto pictures Francis in kneeling before the painted crucifix, in a cut-away of the half ruined church. The bricks fall away and the front of the building is covered in highlight with shadows within in a superb show of perspective of the buildings’ exterior and interior:
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| Scene #4 St Francis Miracle Of The Crucifix - http://www.wga.hu/tours/giotto/assisi/index111.html |
Giotto's authorship of some parts of the last scenes is often questioned especially the ones in the last bay (26-28) which were possibly done by St Cecilia Master. In those last scenes the painter uses many of Giotto’s techniques to represent interior/exterior perspective, but not with the same skill as in the early scenes. The use of highlight and shadow is not as prevalent and non-existent in some cases, which creates flat stages without the drama and grandeur of the others.
An example of one of these flat scenes is scene #27 – Confession of a Woman Raised from the Dead:
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| Scene #27 St Francis Confession Of A Woman Raised From The Dead - http://www.wga.hu/tours/giotto/assisi/index111.html |
The painter has used perspective to show the building in space, but it looks very flat in the execution. There are highlights on the columns but the structure is underdeveloped and the tower at the back is flattened against the background, things that Giotto would have modeled in space and brought to life. An example of this can be seen in #23 – St. Francis Mourned by St. Clare where the building is fully developed and even the figures are drawn to scale – the figure in the tree is highlighted to add importance to it; the tree is darker creating a clear relationship between the two. The figure is smaller than the others helping it to recede into the background, a perspective technique also used for the figures in the crowd:
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| Scene #23 – St. Francis Mourned by St. Clare - http://www.wga.hu/tours/giotto/assisi/index111.html |
Giotto revolutionized painting and established it as a major art form for the next seven centuries. He was renowned in his time and scholars view him as the father of Western pictorial art.
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