Giotto di Bondone (c.1267-1337)

The greatest renovator of early European painting, Giotto was the first to deviate from the rigid course of Byzantine painting. With his unusually imaginative talent, his original iconographies, and his remarkable love for the nature and the human expression, Giotto revolutionized Western Art to the point that many critics consider him, not without reason, the first genius of European painting, praised by his contemporaries Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio.

Giotto's masterwork is the decoration of the Scrovegni Chapel, in Padua, also known as the Arena Chapel, which was completed around 1305. The fresco cycle depicts the Life of the Virgin and the Life of Christ. It is regarded as one of the supreme masterpieces of the Early Renaissance. The fact that Giotto painted the Arena Chapel and that he was chosen by the Commune of Florence in 1334 to design the new campanile (bell tower) of the Florence Cathedral are among the few certainties about his life. Almost every other aspect of it is subject to controversy: his birth date, his birthplace, his appearance, his apprenticeship, the order in which he created his works, whether he painted the famous frescoes in the Upper Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi, and his burial place.