Giotto

Book excerpt: "Thirty miles to the southwest of Venice, in a small park in Padua, lies a modest red brick building, the Scrovegni (or Arena) Chapel, that contains one of the jewels of Early Renaissance art: the most extensive fresco cycle by Giotto. Perfectly preserved, it established Giotto's genius for displacing the Byzantine style of painting and introducing the fundamental principles of Renaissance humanism into art. Painted around 1306, the nearly forty large frescoes that cover the walls and ceiling of the Chapel tell stories from the lives of the Virgin, Christ, and the Virgin's parents, Sts. Joachim and Anne. Created with a subtle yet brilliant array of colors - shimmering blues, golden reds, subtle ivories - these easy-to-read narrative panels have remained comprehensible and evocative to viewers for generations; this may be because, unlike much of the art that preceded Giotto, his images contain sacred figures that behave in human ways, bodies as well as faces that register human feelings familiar to us all. The Scrovegni Chapel is Giotto's masterpiece; it established him as the most famous artist of his day, not only in Italy but in all of Europe. It is little wonder that the art of Giotto has held the attention of Western civilization for over half a millennium"--Bookjacket.