Giotto was born near Florence, in 1266. Employed as a boy in watching
sheep, he is said to have been one day discovered by the artist Cimabue,
as he was sketching one of his flock upon a stone. The painter, surprised
at the promise shown by the boy, who was not more than ten years old,
took him to Florence, and made him his pupil. Giotto’s earliest works
were executed at Florence, and at the age of thirty he had already
attained such fame that he was invited to Rome by Pope Boniface VIII.,
to take part in the decoration of the ancient Basilica of Saint Peter.
The _Navicella_ mosaic which he there executed, representing the
Disciples in the Storm, is preserved in the vestibule of the present
Saint Peter’s. The famous story of “Giotto’s O” belongs to this episode
in his career. When the envoy sent by the pope to engage his services
begged for some drawing or design which might be shown to his holiness in
proof of the artist’s talent, Giotto, taking an ordinary brush full of
color, and steadying his arm against his side, described a perfect circle
on an upright panel with a sweep of the wrist, and offered this manual
feat as sufficient evidence of his powers. The story shows the importance
attached by a great artist to mere precision in workmanship, and teaches
the useful lesson that genius, unsupported by the skill only to be
acquired by discipline and labor, is wanting in the first condition which
makes great achievements possible. This visit to Rome took place about
1298; soon afterward we find Giotto engaged on his frescoes in the church
of Saint Francis at Assisi, a series of allegorical designs illustrating
the saint’s spiritual life and character. In 1306 he was working at the
fine series of frescoes in the Arena Chapel at Padua, which represent
thirty-eight scenes from the lives of the Virgin and of Christ. We here
see Giotto in the fulness of his powers; the incidents are treated with
a charming simplicity and sentiment for nature, and he rises to great
solemnity of style in the more important scenes. Important works by
Giotto are found in many other places beside those mentioned above,
including especially Naples, Ravenna, Milan, Pisa and Lucca. Perhaps
the finest are those which have been discovered of late years in the
Church of Santa Croce at Florence under coats of whitewash which happily
had preserved them almost intact; the “Last Supper,” in the refectory
of the convent attached to the church, is in remarkable preservation,
and is a magnificent example of the style of the time. The twenty-six
panels which he painted for the presses in the sacristry of the same
church are good illustrations of his method of treatment; natural and
dignified with the interest concentrated on the figures; the background
and accessories being treated in the simplest possible manner, and hardly
more than symbols expressing the locality in which the scene is enacted.
Giotto was the first of the moderns who attempted portrait-painting with
any success, and some most interesting monuments of his skill in that
branch of art have been preserved to us. In 1840, discovery was made,
in the chapel of the Podestà’s palace at Florence, of some paintings by
Giotto, containing a number of portraits, among them one of his friend,
the poet Dante; the portraits being introduced, as was usual among the
early painters, and indeed frequent at all periods, as subordinate actors
in the scene represented. Giotto was not only a painter; as a sculptor
and architect he was also distinguished. Giotto died at Florence in
January, 1337, and was buried with public solemnities in the cathedral.
His style, though marked by the hardness and quaintness of a time when
chiaro-scuro and perspective were very imperfectly understood, displays
the originality of his genius in its thoughtful and vigorous design, and
shows how resolutely the artist relied, not on traditions, but on keen
and patient observation of nature.