G i o t t o

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In public domain http://espliego.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/st_francispreachingtothebirds_giotto.jpg
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Saint Francis is one of the few Saints that are still widely remembered and understood.

Like other saints, he was also a poet, but his poetry is still very much alive.  He talks to the creatures one by one as brother or sister and wants each of them to praise God.  Even Death is addressed that way, as you will see below, if I can find the quotes.

Here he is seen preaching to the birds.
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In public domain http://espliego.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/giotto-last-judgment-scene-cappella-scrovegni-a-padova.jpg

This is the Last Judgment. As seen from the viewer,  on the right there is Satan and hell.  On the left you would see those who are going to Heaven. In the center is Christ.

On the left of the painting some parts of the fresco have fallen off, leaving like a brown cloud.

Fresco is water colour applied on  fresh lime mixed with sand. When lime sets up, it gets hard and the colours become indelible and luminous.

It is a very large painting, a complete wall in the Arena chapel, also called  La Cappella Scrovegni in Padua. And the most famous part of this painting is by now that big bluish gray Satan below.

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In public domain http://espliego.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/giotto-di-bondone-last-judgment-scene-cappella-scrovegni-a-padova-detail-hell.jpg

Satan is overweight because he eats all those little unhappy people that keep falling down to him.

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In public domain http://espliego.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/giotto_hell-fragment.jpg
They are  cruelly  pushed and dragged down to where he is.

Towards the top of the scene you can again see some parts of the fresco layer missing.

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Giotto’s most famous painting is the one below, where Christ is laid down in his grave:

In public domain http://espliego.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/giotto_-_scrovegni_-_-36-_-_lamentation_the_mourning_of_christ.jpg

This painting is called Lamentation. Along the top there are  angels weeping.

Since lime was used, and lime becomes hard in a few hours, the painting shows the sections that were painted each in a day. The painter applies the lime mixed with sand on a surface no larger than he can paint in one day or in one sitting.

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In public domain http://espliego.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/giotto-angels-weeping.jpg
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Saint Francis is throwing the devils out of those houses. His prayer makes them fly out of their hiding places.

See how the houses seem to be built almost one on top of the other? And in front of them there is the city wall. Those were rough times, there were wars and criminal gangs everywhere, and to feel safe people all had to try and live inside the space defended by those walls.

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Saint Francis gives his cape to a poor man.

Remember how expensive clothes were in those days, because first they had to get strands of fibers or wool  from  plants or from sheep, and these strands had to be spun into thread and the thread had to be woven into cloth, all very slow work.

Next the cloth had to be dyed, then cut and hand sewn and often embroided. The clothes that you see on the kings and queens of those times would be the work of dozens of people working all year round.

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This is a short quote of Saint Francis’ famous Canticle of the Creatures and further down is the complete text including Death as a sister creature:

Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars;
in the heavens you have made them bright, precious and beautiful.

Be praised, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air,
and clouds and storms, and all the weather,
through which you give your creatures sustenance.

Click to enlarge:

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Finally, a Nativity fresco by Giotto complete with the sheep, the ox and the donkey plus the angels. Giotto often painted the angels as if they had no legs, maybe so that he could put in more angels instead of having his skies full of  long floating clothes.

The black patches on Mary’s skirt are probably  fresco or  goldleaf fallen off.

Look how the little Jesus baby is wrapped up. They used to wrap the babies up like that, and in some countries they still do now. It’s a wonder any survived.

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The Perfect Circle

When Giotto was still an apprentice, he was already admired for his drawings.

According to legend, the Pope sent a messenger who wanted to see some proof of Giotto’s skill. Giotto took a brush and some red paint and painted a circle so perfect that it loooked as if it had been drawn with a compass. This stoy made Giotto more famous than any of his greatest paintings, and even now, some 700 years later, that circle is what is remembered best about him. –  (Marcel Proust once said that if people found out what will be remembered about them they would be surprised.)

Some people can do that in pencil, but with a brush and paint it is harder because it has to be done more slowly.

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Giotto lived from 1266 to 1337.

Giotto’s masterwork is the Arena chapel in Padua completed about 700 years ago.

Giotto  is classified as Early Renaissance. This means that he may have been one of the first men to try and  break out of the mental setting of the Middle Ages in order to do things his own way.

Before that, in the Middle Ages, artists learned only from each other how to paint the virgin, how to do a donkey, without looking at real people or animals. And then, in the Renaissance, the painters looked at the Real Thing so closely that they  ended up disecting it.

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Define Middle Ages
The period of growing Catholic  and Muslim power. It began with the desintegration of  Roman State power in the 5th century.

Define Renaissance
The  revival of classical thinking and art in the 14th–16th centuries. That revival put an end to the monopoly held by the Church and marked the beginning of State power.

Define classical
Art and philosophy created by Greece, next taken over by Rome and revived in the Renaissance. (The term renaissance is French and means born again.)
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