Giotto’s Madonna Enthroned (Ognissanti Madonna)
The artist who most exemplified and, in large part created, new developments in painting was Giotto di Bondone (c. 1267-1337). He was born in the Mugello Valley near Florence and lived mainly in that city, which was the center of the new Renaissance culture. His fame was such that he was summoned all over Italy, and possibly also to France, on various commissions. Boccaccio, an ardent admirer of ancient Rome, described Giotto as having brought the art of painting out of medieval darkness into daylight. He compared Giotto with the Greek Classical painter Apelles as a master of clarity and illusionism.
Giotto was the subject of a growing number of anecdotes about artists that became popular from the fourteenth century onward. The anecdotal tradition is itself indicative of the Classical revival and derives from accounts of Classical Greek painters who were renowned for their illusionistic skill. A comparison of Giotto’s Madonna Enthroned (Ognissanti Madonna) of about 1310 with Cimabue’s Madonna Enthroned illustrates their different approaches to space and to the relationship between space and form.
Both pictures are tempera on panel and may have been intended as altarpieces. Both have elaborate thrones, Byzantine gold backgrounds, and flat, round halos that do not turn illusionistically with the heads. Whereas Cimabue’s throne rises in an irrational, unknown space (there is no floor), Giotto’s is on a horizontal support approached by steps. In contrast to Cimabue’s long, think, elegant figures, Giotto’s are bulky, with draperies that correspond convincingly to organic form and obey the law of gravity. Giotto has thus created an illusion of three-dimensional space – his figures seem to turn and move as in nature.
Whereas Cimabue uses lines of gold to emphasize Mary’s drapery folds, Giotto’s folds are modeled in light and shade. Giotto’s V-shaped folds between Mary’s knees identify both their solidity and the void between them, while the curving folds above the waist indicate a slight spatial turn and direct the viewer’s attention to Jesus. A comparison of the two figures of Jesus reveals at once that Giotto was more interested in the reality of childhood than Cimabue. Cimabue’s infant retains aspects of the medieval homunculus. He has a small head and thin proportions, and he is not logically supported on Mary’s lap. Giotto’s Jesus , on the other hand, has chubby proportions and rolls of baby fat around his neck and wrists; he sits firmly on the horizontal surface of Mary’s leg. Although Giotto’s Jesus is depicted in a regal pose, his right hand raised in a gesture of blessing, his proportions are more natural than those of Cimabue.
It was precisely in the rendition of nature that Giotto seemed to his contemporaries to have surpassed Cimabue and to have revived the forms of antiquity, heralding the emergence of a new generation of artists.[1]
- Laurie Schneider Adams, Art Across Time, vol. 2, 4th ed., (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011), 439-440. ↵
