An artist among the greatest of all time, generally considered the founder of the Italian figurative language, in the same way that Dante is recognized as “the glory of the language.”
According to an ancient and, despite the doubts of some moderns, still valid tradition, he was a pupil of Cimabue, from whom he learned to exalt the harsh force of chiaroscuro and, to counter
GIOTTO di BONDONE – Lamentation over the Dead Christ, fresco in the Upper Basilica of St. Francis – Assisi.
GiotTeschl – Noli me tangere. Master of the Magdalen Chapel – Assisi, Lower Church of St. Francis.
Giotto di Bondone – Lamentation over the Dead Christ, fresco in the Upper Basilica of St. Francis – Assisi.
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Preaching before Honorius III, Apparition at the Chapter of Arles, Confirmation of the Rule), where the use of elementary perspective is most evident, and in those with landscape backgrounds (Preaching to the Birds, Miracle of the Spring, Donation of the Mantle), space emerges from a scaling of volumes, from a concatenated relationship of masses. The poetic reason for such compositions lies precisely in the conscious reduction of visible things to the pure, elementary plastic fact, and in the isolation, therefore, in every narrative instance, of the dominant note of dramatic emotion. All the more so since a biting line borders the volumes and snaps and stretches precisely at the focal point of dramatic tension, where the decisive gesture originates (Renunciation of Worldly Goods, Knight of Celano, Lamentation of the Clarisses). Thus the volumes, first seen in their elementary absoluteness, emerge from their isolation and enter into a reciprocal, living relationship: from this arises that dynamic compositional quality of Giotto’s, through which the volumes are drawn into a tight chain by means of the plane. And the various types of composition might be enumerated like the tones of a scale, from the simplicity of an ancient bas-relief in scenes composed with few figures on a single plane, in gentle rhythm, to those that accommodate in transverse or semicircular groups a large number of bystanders, mute and solemn, of an impenetrable calm yet saturated with dramatic content, to those that shift the focal point of the action to the convergence of multiple compositional lines, now with a solemn motion of ceremony, now in the excitement of a hurried rhythm.
Even the color, vivid and intense, underscores with a sense of contrast the somewhat discontinuous, plastic, and compositional articulations, and everything suggests, in sum, the feeling of a world newly and unexpectedly revealed. The astonished contemplation of creation and the wonder of the miracle are thus the core of the lyricism of the Legend of St. Francis. And one may discreetly discern here a consonance with the candid yet robust poetry of the Fioretti, but everything is recreated in a more solemn and choral tone, in which there is already the presentiment—one that would become law in Padua—of a supreme necessity of events.
In the Jubilee Year of 1300, G. executed in mosaic the Navicella in the atrium of old St. Peter’s, later entirely redone (only two heads of angels remain, one in Boville Ernica, the ancient Bauco, and the other in the Petriano Museum).
On March 25, 1305 (or, according to others, 1306), G. completed the pictorial decoration of the Arena Chapel, built at the behest of Enrico Scrovegni on the site of the Roman amphitheater in Padua. It must have begun, despite the differing opinions of some critics, with the Stories of the Virgin in the uppermost band, characterized by an extreme spatial rarefaction, an abstract, almost metaphysical setting. The more fused chiaroscuro, a new harmony of colors, and the tendency of the volumes to spread across the plane up to the limit of an enlarged contour, which absorbs plastic and spatial suggestions, generate a richness of impasto—in the musical sense of the term—that distinguishes the plasticity of Padua from that of Assisi. The result is a limpid yet pregnant poetry, if not equal to that of Dante, of moral significance. A slow play of tensions and distensions, almost a pulsation of forms, gives a tone of profound and detached life to the stories, which unfold in an atmosphere of armed solitude and ancient solemnity, tempered only by a human breath of sorrow. These are compositions conceived in the manner of a plastic frieze, where the volumes are placed in a tenacious relationship with a continuous background plane, whether this assumes, as in the scenes of the Expulsion of Joachim, the substantial presence of a rocky crag, or instead (Birth of the Virgin, Annunciation to St. Anne) is elliptically indicated by the continuous void of a space behind the plane of the figures. The first Stories of Christ, up to the Flight into Egypt, continue with a more tightly knit relief composition. But already in the Slaughter of the Innocents and the Baptism, new transverse compositional lines emerge, even as the predominance of the horizontal rhythm persists. Corresponding to this more dynamic composition is the swelling of the dramatic wave. Yet one does not find here that unexpected opposition of masses, that broken rhythm, those sudden hiatuses that marked at Assisi the impetuous temperament of a still young artist. What dominates here is a calmer spirit, which finds its pictorial measure in a more fused continuity of form. In the Raising of Lazarus, the convergence upon Christ of the rocky backs and the long declivity of the rock shifts the focal point toward one of the margins, engendering a lasting and unresolved tension. This more dramatic vein of G.’s inspiration culminates, after other scenes in which a pregnant sense of ominous gravity of action is entrusted to the absolute plastic continuity with which the slow rotation of the volumes identifies itself with space, in the fresco of the Lamentation, the dominant peak of his art. The compositional conception of the most convergent lines mysteriously allies itself with the vision of the rotating volumes to create the most absolute identity of plasticity and space. And the anxious concentration of all the lines, summed up by the interminable descent of that rock, is as if arrested by the reduction of all appearances of the sensible world to the square forms of the most elementary and absolute plasticity: the highest expression of grief petrified in an absolute cosmic brotherhood.
The decoration of the Chapel is completed by the Last Judgment on the entrance wall (largely by pupils), the Virtues and Vices on the socle in grisaille, and a panel Crucifix. Several years later are to be placed the Badia Polyptych in the Museum of Santa Croce, only partially autograph and much deteriorated, and the Ognissanti Madonna in the Uffizi, a composition of supreme equilibrium, yet tense and taut.
The frescoes of the Peruzzi Chapels (Stories of St. John the Evangelist) and Bardi (Stories of St. Francis) in Santa Croce in Florence, much repainted in the last century, differ from the Padua cycle in their less tight composition, their more relaxed rhythm, and their broader tempo. In the Peruzzi Chapel, which probably precedes the other, there is, however, a heroic tone that passes into the highest calm in the Bardi Chapel (after 1317), where G. reaches his own pinnacle of classicism.
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**Giotto di Bondone – The Miracle of the Spring, fresco in the Upper Basilica of St. Francis – Assisi.**
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By his political, ideal, and concrete action, he constituted a powerful incentive for the realization of the Italian Risorgimento, countering the particularism of the territories.
Since this association founded by Mazzini was clearly intended to subvert the existing state of affairs, its action could only be illegal from the standpoint of positive law. In the *Istruzione* Mazzini himself states this openly: the G. I. is «an association aiming first and foremost at an insurrectionary goal, but essentially educational until that day and after that day (when it will achieve the unity, independence and sovereignty of the people in the peninsula)»; and in the circular of 8 Dec. 1831 he affirms that the republican programme can only be carried out against the sovereigns. The affirmation of Italian unity, from the Alps to the Ionian Sea, from the mouth of the Var to the west and to Trieste in the east, was not merely the dream of an idealist, but also drew strength from the concept of European equilibrium, a most solid foundation of the political action of European cabinets from the 18th century onwards. The attempt to insert Italian unity and nationality positively and directly into the process of European history failed, above all because of its revolutionary and insurrectional character, but the Italian Risorgimento greatly benefited from it, because these failed attempts served as a stimulus and incentive for a more national and less narrowly particularistic policy, which in the final analysis enabled Piedmont to become the bulwark against foreign domination and gave the Italian national and independence movement a monarchical and unitary solution. In short, the action of the G. I. and of Mazzini, from the Savoy expedition to the sacrifice of the Bandiera brothers and the Milanese uprisings of 1853, conditioned not only the policy pursued by Charles Albert in favour of independence, but in a certain sense underlay all the diplomatic activity of Cavour, from Plombières to the Expedition of the Thousand and the proclamation of the Kingdom. The G. I. as such did not last long: it flourished especially from 1830 to 1840, when its founder in 1834 also established Young Europe, advocating a republican continent with a Young Switzerland, a Young Poland, a Young France and a Young Germany, with a periodical in French and German (*La jeune Suisse*) and one in Italian (*La G. I.*, of which six issues appeared from March 1832 to 1834); the G. I. was dissolved by Mazzini himself in 1848.
As a secret society imbued with clear-cut principles
Obscure is the final phase of G.’s activity, to which only the *S. Stefano* in the Horne Museum in Florence and the *Evangelist* at Chaalis can reasonably be assigned; these are parts of the same work together with other pieces executed by pupils: works of such modulated plasticity and rich in colour as to suggest a further development of his style even beyond the results achieved in the Bardi Chapel. Many panels, some bearing his name, are attributed to him, but they are all workshop productions. In 1334, having been appointed architect of the Cathedral and of the Commune, G. laid the foundations of the bell tower and was able to carry the construction up to the first socle, also providing the designs for the series of reliefs executed by Andrea Pisano and his circle. – See plates XXXVIII-XXXIX.