Giotto Research Paper

991 Words4 Pages
Is Giotto a Gothic or Renaissance artist? Giotto is regarded as one of the most important Italian painters and many as bringing in a new era in Italian painting that has been termed Renaissance Art see his work. However, Giotto worked in a period, the early 14th century when the dominant style of art in Europe was Gothic Art. This essay will discuss, using examples of Giotto’s artworks to see if the painter can be classed as a Gothic or a Renaissance Artist. Gothic Painting and Renaissance Painting are two distinctive styles of painting. Renaissance Painting can be seen as a radical departure from Gothic Art. Gothic Art has the following characteristics, it was relatively realistic, that is it attempted to be life like. There were experiments,…show more content…
This would seem to suggest that Giotto was a Gothic artist. However his treatment of the religious themes is very different. The Italian Master was a pioneer in the methods of perspective and he made great advances in this technique. His figures and scenes are in three dimensions while most Gothic paintings seem to be only two-dimensional. As a result Gothic Art is rather flat and it sometimes feels as if the figures and scenes are motionless. This was often done deliberately to indicate the timelessness of the religious figures in the painting. This is not the case in Giotto his figures and scenes are naturalistic, that is they seem very real because of his superior technique in perspective as in his “Lamentation” (13. The use of perspective means that a viewer experiences a Giotto painting in a different way to a Gothic…show more content…
He also uses light and shade to make his figures seem to be real people. Shade and light is used by the Italian Master to highlight the motion, shape and bodylines of his figures. This all makes his figures very naturalistic. For example in Giotto’s picture the “Stigmatization of Saint Francis” (1325) the artist uses the light and shade to give the figure of St Francis a natural look, by creating folds in his clothing that suggest movement. This is in contrast to Gothic art where there is little use of light and shade and as a result the figures in general are
Show More
Related

  • Michel Learroti Research Paper

    832 Words  | 4 Pages

    I am inspired by Michelangelo Bonarroti because of the beauty of his artwork that is close to perfection. I am also intrigued by the fact that he excelled not only as a painter, but also as a sculptor, a poet, and an architect. He lived in Florence, Italy during the Renaissance and was known as the "Father and Master of All the Arts". He was very famous and loved during his lifetime that his name became a synonym of “masterpiece”. He completed artworks for nine different Catholic Popes. His most

    Read More

More about Giotto Research Paper

Open Document