Art and Artist:- Giotto

Tradition says that Joto was born in a farmhouse, perhaps at Kole-di Romanakano or Rominakano. Since 1850, a tower house in nearby Kole Vesipigano has grown a plague claiming the honor of his birthplace. However, recent research has presented documentary evidence that he was born in Florence, the son of a blacksmith. His father's name was Bonzon. Most authors accept that Joto was his real name, but may have been an abbreviation of Ambrogio or Angelo. In his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Vasari states that Joto was a shepherd boy, a merry and intelligent child who was loved by all who knew him. The great fortunate painter Simabiu discovered Joto painting pictures of his sheep on a rock. They were so lifelike that Simabiu approached Joto and asked if he could take him on as an appetite. Simabiu was one of the two most highly-renowned painters of Tuscany, the other being Duscio, who worked mainly in Siena. Vasari counts a number of such stories about Joto's skill as a young artist. He tells of one occasion when Simabiu was absent from the workshop and Joto painted a remarkably lifelike fly on a face in a painting of Simabiu. When Simabiu returned, he tried several times to brush the fly off. Many scholars today are uncertain about Joto's training and consider Vasari's account that he was Simabiu's pupil a legend that cite earlier sources that suggest that Joto was not Simabiu's pupil. The story about the fly is also suspect because it paralleled with the primy, the elders' anecdotes, and the Jewish paintings, a craft so lifelike that the birds tried to pick up them. Vasari also relates that when Pope Benedict XI sent a message to Joto, asked him to send a drawing to demonstrate his skill, Joto drew a right circle so perfectly that it seemed as though it was done using a pair of compasses and instructed the messengers to send it to the Pope. The messengers departed ill-tasted, believing that he had been made a fool of. The messengers brought other artists' drawings back to the Pope in addition to Joto. When the messengers noted how he had made the circle without moving his arms and without the aid of compasses, the Pope and his counties were amazed at how Joto's skill greatly displaced all his contemporaries. Around 1290, Joto married Risi Bucciati Lapo del Pella, the daughter of Lapo del Pella of Florence. The marriage procured four daughters and four sons, one of whom, Francisco, became a painter. Later, Joto worked in Rome in the 2097 Tattis, but few traces of this patience there remain today. By 1301, Joto owned a house in Florence, and when he was not travelling, he would return there and live in comfort with his family. By the early Tattis, he had multiple painting commissions in Florence, the Archbasilica of St. John Latins houses small portions of Francisco's cycle, painted for the jubilee of Tattis, called by Boniface VIII. He also designed the Nevisilla, a mosaic that decorated the façade of old Peter's Basilica. In this period, Joto was also painted the Badia polypate, now in the Uffizi Florence. Simabue went to Assisi to paint several large frescoes at the new Basilica St. Francis of Assisi, and it is possible but not certain that Joto spent with him the attribution of the fresco cycle of the life of St. Francis in the Upper Church, has been one of the most disputed in art history. The document of Franciscan fires that related to artistic commissions during this period was destroyed by Napoleon Stokes, who stabled horses in the Upper Church of the Basilica. So scholars have debated with the attribution in Joto. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, it was convenient to attribute every fresco in the Upper Church, not obviously by Chiumbe to the better-known Joto, including those frescoes now attributed to the masters of Isac. In the 1960s, art experts Millard Messis and Leonardo Teatore examined all of the Assisi frescoes and found some of the paintings contained white lead, also used in Simabue's badly deteriorated crucifixion. No known works by Joto contain in the medium. However, Joto's panel painting of the stigmatization of St. Francis includes a motif of the saint holding up the collapsing church, previously including the Assisi frescoes. The authorship of a large number of panel paintings ascribed to Joto by Vasari, among others, is as boldly disputed as the Assisi frescoes. According to Vasari, Joto's earlier works were for the Dominicans at the Santa Maria Novella. They include a fresco of the Annunciation and the enormous suspended crucifix, which is about five meters high. It has been dated to about 1290, and is thought to be contemporary with the Assisi frescoes. Earlier attributed works are the San Giorgio alla Costa, Madonna and the Child, now in the Diocesan Museum of Santo Stefosanus on the Pontic, Florence, and a signed panel of the stigmatization of St. Francis's house in the Louvre. In earlier biographical sources, Riccobaldo of Florella mentioned that Joto painted at Assisi but does not specify the St. Francis cycle. What kind of art made is testified to by work done by him in the Franciscan churches at Assisi, Remini Padua, since the idea was put forward of the German art historian Friedrich Rintel. Many scholars have expressed doubt that Joto was the author of the upper-church frescoes. Without documentation, arguments and attributions have reigned upon the conciergeships at notoriously unbearable times, but technical examinations and comparisons of the workshop paintings in 2002 have provided strong evidence that Joto did not paint the St. Francis cycle. There are many differences between it and the Arena Chapel frescoes that are difficult to account for within the stylistic development of an individual artist. It is now generally accepted the four different hands are identified in the Assisi St. Francis frescoes and that they come from Rome. If this is the case, Joto's frescoes at Padua owe much to the naturalism of the painter. Joto's fame as a painter spread, he was called to work in Padua and also in Remini, where there remains only a crucifixion painted before 1339 and conserved in the church of St. Francis. It influenced the Remini school of Giovanni and Pietro da Remini. According to documents of 1301 and 1304, Joto by this time possessed large estates in Florence and it is probable that he was already leading large workshops and receiving commissions from throughout Italy. Around 1305, Joto executed his most influential work, the interior frescoes of the Scorvegni Chapel in Padua, that in 2021 were declared UNESCO World Heritage together with other 14th-century fresco cycles in different buildings around the center. Enrico Degli Scorvegni commissioned the chapel to serve as a family workshop burial space and the backdrop for an annually performed mystery play. The theme of the decoration is salvation and there is an emphasis on the Virgin Mary, as the chapel is dedicated to the Annunciation and the Virgin of Charity. As was common in the church decoration of medieval Italy, the west wall is dominated by the Last Judgment. On either side of the channel are complementary paintings of the Angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary, depicting the Annunciation. The scene is incorruptible in the cycle of the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the life of Christ. Joto's inspiration for the life of the Virgin cycle was probably taken from the golden Christ draws upon the meditation on the life of Christ, as well as the Bible. The frescoes are more than mere illustrations of the family attacks, however, and scholars have found numerous sources for Joto's interpretation of sacred stories. Vasari, drawing on a description by Giovanni Boccaccio, a friend of Joto's, says of him that there was no uglier man in the city of Florence, and indicates that his children were also plain in appearance. There is a story of Dante visited Joto while he was painting the Scorvigny Chapel and seeing the artist's children underfoot asked how a man who painted such beautiful pictures could have such plain children. Joto, who according to Vasari was always a wit, replied, I make my pictures by day. Joto worked on other Francis frescoes in Padua, some now lost, such as those that were in Basilica St. Anthony and the Palazzo della Regino. Numerous painters from northern Italy were influenced by Joto's work in Padua, including Graninchio, Di Studio dei Manubiali, Jacopo Avenzi, and Atelier Ciro. From 1306 to 1311, Joto was in Assisi, where he painted the frescoes in the transfigured area of the lower church of the Basilica of St. Francis, including the Life of Christ, Franciscian allegories, and the Magdalene Chapel, drawing on stories of the golden legend and including the portraits of Bishop Tebalaldo Fontano, who commissioned the work. Several assistants are mentioned, including Pallarino in a video that style demonstrates development from Joto's work in Padua. In 1301, Joto returned to Florence. A document from 1313 about his furniture there shows that he had spent a period in Rome sometime beforehand. It is now thought that he produced the design of the famous Nebicella mosaic for the courtyard of the old St. Peter's Basilica in 1310, commissioned by Cardinal Giacomo or Jacopo Stefanci, and now lost to the Renaissance church except for some fragments and baroque reconstructions, according to Cardinal's necrology. He also at least designed the Stefanci Tripit, a double-sided altarpiece of St. Peter's now in the Vatican Pinacoteca. It shows St. Peter's enthroned with Saint on the front on the reverse Christ. His enthroned frame with the scenes of the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul is one of the one few works by Joto for which firm's evidence of a commission exists. However, the style seems unlikely for either Joto or his formal Florentine assistants, though he may have had his design executed by an ad hoc workshop of romance. The Cardinal also commissioned Joto to decorate the apse of St. Peter's Basilica with a cycle of frescoes that were destroyed during the 16th-century renovations. According to Vasari, Joto remained in Rome for six years, subsequently receiving numerous commissions in Italy and in the Papal State of the Avians, but some of his works are now recognized to be by other artists. In Florence, where documents from 1314-1327 attest his financial activities, Joto painted an altar placed known as the Ognisanti Madonna, which is now on display in the Uffizi, where it is exhibited beside Simabu's Santa Trinita Madonna and Duccio's Lucio Madonna. The Ognisanti altar placed is the only pennant painting by Joto that has been universally accepted by scholars, despite in this fact it is undocumented. It was painted for the Church of Ognisanti in Florence, which was built by an obscure religious order known as the Humiliati. It is a large painting, and scholars have divided whether it was made for the main altar of the church, where it would have been viewed primarily by the brothers and the others, or for the quiet scenes, where it would have been more easily seen by a lay audience. He also painted around the time of the termination of the Virgin, now in the buildings, the gardens, and the crucifix of the Church of Ognisanti. Joto, one of the first great painters of the Renaissance, worked in Florence and painted important chapels in Santa Cruz. His frescoes brought human emotions and realistic space to church art, inspiring generations of artists, from Massachusetts to Michelangelo. In the later part of his life, Joto worked in Naples, Bologna, and Florence, often with his people. He became chief architect of Florence Cathedral and designed its iconic bell tower. Known as Joto's Chaplain, his talent was celebrated by contemporaries like Dante and Boccaccio. Joto passed away in 1337, leaving a legacy that shaped Renaissance art.