Giotto di Bondone

Giotto di Bondone is an Italian painter and architect, revolutionary figure who marks the break with medieval Byzantine art and lays the foundations of the Italian Renaissance. Breaking with the hieratic and two-dimensional tradition of Gothic art, he introduces a revolutionary conception of pictorial space based on naturalistic observation, volumetric representation of bodies, and psychological expression of human emotions that profoundly humanizes religious iconography. His monumental frescoes of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (1303-1305), recounting the life of Christ and the Virgin, constitute a decisive turning point in the history of Western art through their dramatic sense, innovative spatial composition and ability to visually translate spirituality and human feelings. Admired by his contemporaries Dante and Boccaccio who call him a genius having resurrected the art of painting, he influences all Italian painting of the Trecento and Quattrocento. Also architect of the Florence campanile bearing his name, he embodies the passage from Middle Ages to Renaissance, affirming the dignity of the artist creator and paving the way for the visual humanism of the Renaissance.