Who Was Giotto and Why Was He So Important?

A fly that a Tuscan boy named Giotto may have painted, once, set the Italian Renaissance abuzz. It was so true to life, according to the art historical legend that trails Giotto to this day, that Cimabue, the master painter he was apprenticed to, believed it was an actual pest. “Returning to his work, he tried more than once to drive it away with his hand, thinking it was real,” wrote art historian Giorgio Vasari in his influential book, Lives ofthe Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550).

The fly may have looked convincing in this charming story, but the tale itself was probably a complete fiction, along with much else that Vasari wrote about early-14th-century painter Giotto di Bondone. The artist may or may not have been born near Florence in the village of Vespignano, and he probably wasn’t discovered by painter Cimabue while tending a flock of sheep and drawing on rocks. What does hold true, though, is that Giotto helped revive naturalism in painting, bringing empathy and humanity, along with piercing observation, to his figures and illustrations of biblical stories.

Giotto is hailed as the father of the Italian Renaissance, and his name is used to brand colorful markers for emerging (child-aged) artists to this day. He was fêted even in his lifetime. Humanist writer Giovanni Boccaccio, a contemporary of Giotto, wrote in his Decameron (1353) that “so faithful did he remain to nature . . . that whatever he depicted had the appearance, not of a reproduction, but of the thing itself.” Giotto’s reputation lived on, with sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti writing around 1450 that “Giotto saw in art what others did not put into it. He brought forth naturalistic art and gracefulness.”

When Giotto died in 1337 at around the age of 70 (his year of birth is unclear), he was given a ceremonious state funeral in Florence, the first time such an honor was bestowed upon an artist. In his lengthy career he worked across media and subjects, creating large mosaics, altarpieces, painted crucifixes, portraits, and frescoes. There still isn’t scholarly consensus about what works can be firmly attributed to him, although there is widespread agreement that he painted the Arena Chapel frescoes in Padua, the Bardi Chapel frescoes in Santa Croce, and the Ognissanti Madonna.