Italian 1267-1337 Giotto Galleries Giotto di Bondone (c. 1267 ?C January 8, 1337), better known simply as Giotto, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence. He is generally considered the first in a line of great artists who contributed to the Italian Renaissance. Giotto's contemporary Giovanni Villani wrote that Giotto was "the most sovereign master of painting in his time, who drew all his figures and their postures according to nature. And he was given a salary by the commune [of Florence] in virtue of his talent and excellence." The later 16th century biographer Giorgio Vasari says of him "...He made a decisive break with the ...Byzantine style, and brought to life the great art of painting as we know it today, introducing the technique of drawing accurately from life, which had been neglected for more than two hundred years." Giotto's masterwork is the decoration of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, commonly called the Arena Chapel, completed around 1305. This fresco cycle depicts the life of the Virgin and the life of Christ. It is regarded as one of the supreme masterpieces of the Early Renaissance. That Giotto painted the Arena Chapel and that he was chosen by the commune of Florence in 1334 to design the new campanile (bell tower) of the Florence Cathedral are among the few certainties of his biography. Almost every other aspect of it is subject to controversy: his birthdate, his birthplace, his appearance, his apprenticeship, the order in which he created his works, whether or not he painted the famous frescoes at Assisi, and where he was eventually buried after his death.  Related Paintings of Giotto :. | The Suitors Praying | Last Judgment | Bewening of Christ | The Madonna in Glory | Homage of a Simple Man |
Related Artists:
Trigoulet Eugene
French ,1867-Berck-sur-Mer 1910
William Frederick Yeames,RA
1835-1918 English painter. The son of a British consul in Russia, Yeames was sent to school in Dresden after the death of his father in 1842. He also studied painting there. The collapse of the Yeames family fortune resulted in a move to London in 1848, where Yeames learnt anatomy and composition from George Scharf (1788-1860). He later took lessons from F. A. Westmacott. In 1852 he continued his artistic education in Florence under Enrico Pollastrini and Raphael Buonajuto, from whom he learnt the methods of the Old Masters. He drew from frescoes by Ghirlandaio, Gozzoli and Andrea del Sarto and painted in the Life School at the Grand Ducal Academy. He then went to Rome and made landscape studies and copied Old Masters, including Raphael's frescoes in the Vatican. His extensive study of Italian art gave him a precision and facility that assisted his artistic success upon his return to London in 1859. There he set up a studio in Park Place and became involved with the ST JOHN'S WOOD CLIQUE. He exhibited at the Royal Academy and the British Institution from 1859 and became an ARA in 1866.
H.Chr.Jensen