Giotto

Description

Vasari famously wrote that Giotto "recovered the true method of painting, which been lost for many years before him," and indeed he is traditionally considered a founder of the Italian Renaissance. Producing a series of commissioned works for the church and upper classes in his native Tuscany and surrounding regions, Giotto changed the course of European art by breaking away from the rigid, stereotyped figures of the Byzantine and Giotto medieval traditions. His innovation was to give his characters natural movement and expression. His great fresco cycles, such as the lives of the Virgin and Christ in the Scrovegni (or Arena) Chapel, Padua, are populated with realistic depictions of three-dimensional figures; secondary characters, both comic and tragic, display the range of the painter's wit and invention. And Giotto's treatment of perspective was just as revolutionary as his approach to the human form. The dramatic power of his scenes is heightened by the convincing illusionistic spaces in which he places them. In this authoritative survey of Giotto's life and work, Professor Francesca Flores d'Arcais draws on an impressive range of sources, from fourteenth-century documents to the most recent art - historical investigations. Her research leads her to important re-attributions of Giottesque paintings and to new conclusions regarding the execution and dating of both famous and lesser-known works. This second edition also includes a discussion of the earthquake of September 29, 1997 that damaged the frescoes of the Upper Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi - some of which are attributed to the artist in the early phase of his career - and the restoration effort that followed. More than three hundred illustrations, most in full color and some on double gatefold pages, reproduce all of Giotto's important frescoes in exquisite detail, as well as his moving crucifixes and jewel-like polyptychs. These illustrations are based on new photography of Giotto's paintings, many of which have recently been restored to their original brilliance, making this the definitive monograph on the greatest of trecento masters.

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Giotto (Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists)

Description

Presents a biography of Giotto

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Giotto Di Bondone: 1267-1337 (Taschen Basic Art)

Description

According to legend, he was discovered by Cimabue as a boy, sketching his father's sheep. Giotto di Bodone (1266-1337) was the most famous and influential painter of his generation in Italy. As the pioneer of modern painting, his impact was so enormous that his artist colleagues in Florence, however capable, were left struggling to keep up. His services were engaged by numerous high officials and princes, including the Pope and his cardinals, King Robert of Anjou, and the Scaligeri and Visconti. All these works, including the large secular cycles, are lost. Amongst his surviving works, his masterpieces are undoubtedly his decoration, from 1303 to 1305, of the private chapel built by the financier Enrico Scrovegni for his family in a former Roman amphitheatre in Padua, the fresco cycle in the Upper Church of Assisi, and the frescos in side chapels of Santa Croce in Florence. The simplicity and strength of his forms, as well as the humanism he infused in his works, set him apart from his Byzantine contemporaries and at the forefront of Italian painting in the early years of the Renaissance.

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Giotto and his works in Padua - An Explanatory Notice of the Series of Woodcuts Executed for the Arundel Society After the Frescoes in the Arena Chapel

Description

Giotto and his works in Padua - An Explanatory Notice of the Series of Woodcuts Executed for the Arundel Society After the Frescoes in the Arena Chapel is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by John Ruskin is in the English language, and may not include graphics or images from the original edition. If you enjoy the works of John Ruskin then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection.

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Italian Frescoes: The Age of Giotto, 1280-1400

Description

The fourth, but the earliest volume chronologically, of the only comprehensive survey in modern times of the surviving Italian frescoes from the end of the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and Mannerism, this groundbreaking oeuvre is an achievement in scholarship and publishing of the same magnitude as Abbeville's "Art of Florence" and "Art and Spirit of Paris". Following the success of the previous volumes in this extraordinary series: "Italian Frescoes: The Early Renaissance", "Italian Frescoes: The Flowering of the Renaissance", and "Italian Frescoes: The High Renaissance and Mannerism" - "Italian Frescoes: The Age of Giotto", 1280 - 1400 presents twenty-two outstanding fresco cycles. Created during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, these cycles set new standards for painting and an innovative vision of man, paving the way for the monumental achievements of the Renaissance. It was at this time that fresco painting was not only commissioned for churches and chapels, but also for such secular places as town halls and royal residences with humanist in addition to religious themes. The fresco cycles featured here include brilliant works by Giotto in Assisi, Padua, and Florence; dramatic paintings by Cimabue, thought to be Giotto's teacher; Pietro Cavillini in Rome; and the Sienese artists Simone Martini and Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti - all of these works still visible on walls and ceilings of palaces and churches spanning Italy from the Veneto to Rome. The authors describe and illustrate such celebrated sites as the Church of Saint Francis in Assisi, the Chapel of the Scrovegni in Padua, the Public Palace in Siena, and the papal chapel, the Sancta Sanctorum, in Rome. Each of the twenty-two chapters is concise and authoritative, offering a descriptive and interpretive essay on all aspects of fresco painting, covering the artists and their patrons in the context of their cultural and political history. Each essay concludes with a diagram of the site, followed by a series of full- and double-page color plates showing the entire cycle, many reproduced from new photographs of recently restored frescoes. No publisher until now has attempted to gather together and document all the important fresco cycles of Italian art from the late thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries. While this volume is the predecessor to the previous books, "Italian Frescoes: The Age of Giotto", 1280 - 1400 easily stands alone as a masterpiece of art and scholarship which will be welcomed by art historians and art lovers alike.

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The Glorious Impossible [Illustrated with Frescoes from the Scrovegni Chapel by Giotto]

Description

The birth of Jesus was a Glorious Impossible. Like love, it cannot be explained, it can only be rejoiced in. And that is what master storyteller Madeleine L'Engle does in this compellingly written narrative, inspired by Giotto's glorious frescoes from the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. With a simple clarity that illuminates the life of Christ, Madeleine L'Engle gives eloquent voice to the miracle of God's love.

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