Giotto’s bell tower photos

Giotto di Bondone was the symbol of the Middle Ages. With his interpretation of figurative art, he completely transformed painting.

Little is known about his origins. His birth year is also uncertain, ranging from 1276 to 1267, depending on whether the Lives of Giorgio Vasari or the Centiloquio of Antonio Pucci are taken as a reference. Based on Ghiberti’s testimony, Vasari himself tells us that Giotto was born in Mugello and was the best student of the master Cimabue.

According to other authors, Giotto would have had Florentine origins, and those of Vespignano in Mugello would have been only family possessions.

Whatever his origins, Giotto was certainly Florentine in spirit. Boccaccio described him as a lively spirit and quick with a joke. In the fifth novella of the sixth day, the poet of Certaldo imagines him engaged in a funny conversation with the jurist Forese da Rabatta:

Listen, Giotto. If a stranger who had never seen you, seeing you so ugly, came towards us now, would he think you are the best painter in the world?

Yes, if looking at you, he would think you know the alphabet (Giovanni Boccaccio)

Many other curious anecdotes are linked to the life of the first great Florentine artist: from the perfect O for Boniface VIII to the fly on Cimabue’s painting to the bristles of pigs to end with the hideous children.

In 1334, Giotto was appointed Master of Works of the Duomo and began construction of the Campanile, which, although completed by his successors Andrea Pisano and Francesco Talenti, still bears his name today and represents the most important architectural work of Florentine Gothic.

Despite Giotto being the inimitable executor of the frescoes of the Basilica of San Francesco d’Assisi, it cannot be said that he aspired to the poverty advocated by the Saint. In addition to earning money from his main activity, Giotto benefited from the rental of machinery and probably practiced usury.