Masters in Art, Part 32, v. 3, August, 1902: Giotto

Masters in Art, Part 32, v. 3, August, 1902: Giotto - A Series of Illustrated Monographs

REMITTANCES should be made by postal or express money-order, registered letter, or, in amounts up to $1.00, in one or two cent stamps. On personal checks drawn on banks outside of Boston or New York, 10 cents should be added to cover collection charges. This portrait of Giotto was painted in the first half of the fifteenth century by Paolo Uccello, a Florentine artist. It is a detail of a picture containing five heads, representing, besides Giotto, Uccello himself, Donatello, Brunelleschi, and Manetti. Vasari took the engraving for his biography of Giotto from this likeness, which was probably based upon some older portrait of the artist. He is here represented in a red cloak and head covering; and it would seem that Uccello's brush has somewhat flattered him, for we are told that he was "singularly ill-favored" in outward appearance. "In a village of Etruria," writes Ghiberti, the oldest historian of the Florentine Renaissance, "Painting took her rise." In other words, Giotto di Bondone[1] was born, between 1265 and 1270, at Colle, in the Commune of Vespignano, a village of the Val Mugello fourteen miles from Florence. There the boy, who had been called Angiolo, after his grandfather, and went by the nickname of Angiolotto, or Giotto, kept his father's flocks on the grassy slopes of the Apennines, and was found one day by Cimabue, as he rode over the hills, drawing a sheep with a sharp stone upon a rock. Full of surprise at the child's talent for drawing, the great painter asked him if he would go back with him to Florence; to which both the boy and his father, a poor peasant named Bondone, gladly agreed. Thus, at ten years old, Giotto was taken straight from the sheepfolds and apprenticed to the first painter in Florence. Such is the story told by Ghiberti and confirmed by Leonardo da Vinci, who, writing half a century before Vasari, remarks that Giotto took nature for his guide, and began by drawing the sheep and goats which he herded on the rocks. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

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Ebook Number: 42952
Author: Anonymous
Release Date: Jun 15, 2013
Format: eBook
Language: English