Giotto

Giotto di Bondone (c. 1267–1337) was a painter and architect from Florence. Tradition places his birth in the countryside outside the city, though recent research points to Florence itself. Vasari's story that Cimabue found him drawing sheep and took him on as an apprentice is now treated by many scholars as legend. He worked in Rome around 1297–1300 and later in Padua, Naples and Bologna, and in 1334 the Commune of Florence chose him to design the cathedral's new bell tower. His most influential work is the fresco cycle of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, completed around 1305 for Enrico degli Scrovegni: thirty-seven scenes from the lives of the Virgin and Christ. Breaking with Byzantine models, he gave his figures solid, three-dimensional bodies, garments with real weight, and faces and gestures drawn from close observation, and he arranged them so that the viewer seems to take a place within the scene. Vasari saw in this the start of painting as later centuries understood it. Both works here come from the Scrovegni Chapel: Lamentation (The Mourning of Christ) and The Kiss of Judas.