The best paintings by Giotto di Bondone and their description

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Words that can describe the work of the great Italian artist Giotto di Bondone are the lines of the poet Arseny Tarkovsky:

I am human, I am in the middle of the world, A myriad of ciliates are behind me, There are myriads of stars in front of me.

I lie between them at full height -

Two shores connecting the sea, Two spaces connected by a bridge.

These words characterize not only the writer, but the entire era in which he lived. Giotto's paintings are the very bridge that connected the two stages in the art of painting.

The founder of modern painting

Giotto lived at the turn of two centuries - the 13th and 14th. Exactly the middle of his life fell on this period, and this era in all world culture is usually called the era of Dante and Giotto. They were contemporaries.

Philosopher Merab Mamardashvili once said about Giotto's paintings: "Giotto went to transcendent zero." This complex phrase at one time made many laugh. But if you think about it, it's impossible to be more precise. After all, Giotto, as an artist, started from scratch.

Look at the most famous paintingsGiotto. What he did in art, what he proposed to art, no one had ever done before him. He started from zero, and perhaps in this sense every man of genius goes to a transcendental zero. Michelangelo, Paul Cezanne and Kazimir Malevich did it. They started from scratch, from scratch. In this sense, and Giotto went to the transcendental zero. Because one can say about him quite calmly and confidently: it is with Giotto Bondone that modern European painting begins.

Most famous creations

What do we know of Giotto's paintings? These are "The Adoration of the Magi", "Entrance into the Temple", "The Entombment", "Anna's Blessing", "The Crucifixion", "The Miracle with the Source". Giotto di Bondone painted paintings and frescoes for the Arena Chapel in Padua, for churches in Florence and Assisi. His handwriting cannot be confused with the style of other artists. The description of Giotto's paintings is a retrospective of gospel parables. He also left us images of Christian saints, such as St. Francis, St. Lawrence, St. Stefan, John the Evangelist and others

Giotto's paintings with names other than Padua, Florence and the Vatican are in the collection catalogs of museums such as Jacquemart-André and the Louvre in France, in the National Gallery of Art in Washington and in Raleigh (University of North Carolina), in Paris, in Germany and the UK.

Before him, the icon or Byzantine painting was accepted in the European world. Paintings by Giotto di Bondone with biblical titles speak for themselves. But these are by no means icons. This is the famous "Ognisanti Madonna", stored inUffizi, and Giotto's painting "Flight into Egypt".

Giving physicality to biblical characters

The biographer of Italian artists Giorgio Vasari tells us a legend that existed at that time: Giotto was a student of the artist Cimabue. And in the Uffizi Museum there are two paintings hanging nearby, two Madonnas - Madonna Cimabue and Madonna Giotto.

When you look at both Madonnas and compare them, even if you know nothing about art, you see the difference not only between two artists, but also between two eras, between two completely different principles. You see the absolute difference. You understand that they perceive this world in completely different ways.

Cimabue's paintings are unusually refined, graceful, one can say that he is not just a Byzantine, medieval, but a Gothic artist. His Madonna is ethereal, amazingly beautiful, decorative. Long fingers, long arms do not hold the baby, but make a sign that they are holding him. Her face conveys the Eastern canon adopted in Byzantine painting: a narrow face, long eyes, a thin nose, sadness in her eyes.

This is a flat ethereal canonical conditional painting of an icon, face. Not a face, not a personality type, but a face.

And next to it hangs an icon, or, let's say, already a picture, Giotto. On a throne, an inlaid, beautiful throne, in a style that only then was accepted, only then came into fashion. Such marble inlay. A broad-shouldered, powerful, young woman is sitting, with a blush all over her cheek. Holding the baby firmly. beautifulWhite shirt. The body emphasizes its power. And she calmly looks at us. There is no pain in her face. It is full of high human dignity and peace. This is no longer the Madonna, not the icon of the Virgin. This is Madonna in the late Italian sense and understanding of this plot. That is, this is both Mary and the Beautiful Lady.

It's safe to say that what Giotto did in painting lasted in European fine art until impressionism. It was Giotto who created what in modern language is called composition. What is composition? This is how the artist sees the plot, how he imagines it. He acts as a witness, a participant in the event. He creates the illusion that he was personally there.

Compliance with the action of the plot

That is, the artist himself is a screenwriter, director and actor of his paintings. His creations are a kind of theater in which actors act, and he, the artist, directs these actors. I was there! I give you my word, I was present at this, but it was so,”Giotto practically says with his creations. Well, is it conceivable for the medieval consciousness to say such a thing!

Giotto appears before us as a person who is responsible for what he writes. And his paintings, in particular, "Kiss of Judas" and "Flight into Egypt", are frescoes painted by an eyewitness of the action.

Mural painted by the artist himself

Around 1303, Giotto received a wonderful offer - an order to paint a small church,which was built in the city of Padua in the Roman Arena. Biographer Joto, more precisely, one of his biographers Giorgio Vasari leaves very interesting information. He says that Giotto came to paint the Padua church, not long ahead of his company, that is, his comrades. Just as in the Middle Ages Andrei Rublev painted his associates, in the same way in the West the church was painted by an artist with a great name, associates, that is, with his artistic team. "Kiss of Judas" - a fresco that he painted himself. In all likelihood, this is one of the few absolutely original works of his, like Rublev's Trinity, and it really reveals Giotto's personality very fully.

"Kiss of Judas": description of the painting

And when we look at the fresco "The Kiss of Judas", we immediately highlight the center of the composition with our eyes. The main dramatic events take place in this center. We see how Judas, embracing Christ, absorbs him. And these two figures are central. We see on the right how the high priest of the Jerusalem temple entered. He points his finger at Christ. And on the left we see the Apostle Peter, who, although he denied it three times, while the rooster crowed three times, nevertheless pulled out a bread knife and cut off their ear. We see how he throws himself at Judas with this knife, but the crowd blocks his way, and if we follow the direction of the high priest's hand and the direction of the knife, we will find that these lines converge above Judas' cloak, just on the faces. Therefore, we can say that the center of the composition is not even two figures connected together, but two faces. Here with thispoints it is interesting to read this song.

Energy and tensions

Giotto is always spoken about with some irony: “What did Giotto discover?”. For example, in Fellini's Amarcord, when an art teacher at school asks about what Giotto created, the students shout in chorus: "Perspective." This is very funny. After all, Giotto did not create any perspective. This is an incorrect statement. He did not create a perspective, but another space of the picture, where space should be understood as an action unfolding in front of the viewer.

Look at the Judas Kiss fresco. There is a crowd of people. And this crowd entered into the night. Across the dark sky, torches burning left and right. You feel movement against the sky. In the dark sky, these lights, the flames fluctuate, you feel the excitement and electrification of the crowd. What is interesting in the crowd? That she is by no means indifferent. In this extras, if you look closely, almost every participant is developed. There are just incredibly transferred states.

Multi-time

Giotto was the first, but also the last. He, as they say, not only set, but also solved a huge number of tasks, not just creating the composition “I, Giotto, I see this dramatic solution like this: here are my characters, here is my choir!”, And when he worked it out psychologically, when he also shows multitemporality in one action.

Each ofhis frescoes cause great amazement, and even bewilderment. How did a person in one life, having no precedents, as they say, having reached the transcendent zero, created contemporary European art from scratch, a composition as a temporary action, as a causal relationship, saturating it with diversity of time and a very large number of psychological shades?

Conclusion

In this article, we have analyzed in more or less detail only two paintings by Giotto with the names “The Kiss of Judas” and “Madonna Onisanti”. The work of the master can be admired endlessly. You can look at them for hours, but a lifetime is not enough to tell about all the creations of Giotto di Bondone, whose paintings were both appreciated by time and remained in time. All of them are the creations of the greatest artist and the man who started from scratch.