Giotto di Bondone: Renaissance Man

Ahhh, Giotto. I've heard his name, but I've never actually seen his work before. He is known as the first great painter of the Renaissance. His figures were renown for their life.  In his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, Giorgio Vasari told the story of Giotto as a mischievous apprentice painter who took advantage of his master's absence to paint a fly onto one of the master's paintings. The story claims that when his master returned and saw the fly, it was so life-like that he tried to brush it away.

For two hundred years before Giotto, images in Western art had been flat and stylized. His life-like figures were something new and exciting. Beyond just making his people look "real," he also infuses personality and emotion into them. I love the words of the art critic, John Ruskin. "He painted the Madonna and St. Joseph and the Christ, yes, by all means... but essentially Mamma, Papa and Baby."

Nativity from the Scrovegni Chapel, c. 1305

Isn't this fresco breathtaking? The way that Mary is looking at her new son... do you remember what those first glimpses of your babies felt like? He painted it so tenderly.

Although he was a painter, sculptor, and architect, Giotto is best-known for his frescoes. Perhaps his most famous work is on the Scrovegni Chapel. This small, unassuming, pink-brick building houses a glorious riot of color. 37 separate scenes chronicle the life of Mary, the life and death of Jesus, and personifications of Vices and Virtues. They culminate a wall-spanning image of the Last Judgement and are linked by a ceiling of stars. Just looking at photographs of the interior is stunning. I cannot imagine what it would be like to stand in the middle of it. Someday...

Giotto is scheduled during our second term. Normally I would take a break from the official fine arts schedule so that we could focus on Christmas in December. However, the scheduled images fit right into that theme. I found a beautiful book called The Glorious Impossible, written by Madeline L'Engle (yes, the same L'Engle who wrote the Wrinkle in Time series) and illustrated with frescoes from the Scrovegni Chapel. L'Engle's text tells the gospel story while the frescoes are reproduced on large, glossy, full-color pages. My own plan is to read through the book during our morning time and to study our prints as they match up to the story. I included a link to the book we're using, but proceed at your own risk. I have only flipped through the book—the images are gorgeous, but I haven't read the text yet, so I can't speak for the quality of the storytelling.

As always, we will follow the art recommendations from AmblesideOnline. Although our focus will be on the book, The Glorious Impossible, we will still post our regular prints in the dining room and the kids will still get their own art cards to add to their Books of Masterpieces.

Click here to download 8x10" prints
Click here to download 4x6" art cards

Normally I would include an image of the artist as part of our print set, but Giotto is a little different. With more than seven centuries between his life and ours, and no confirmed self-portraits, we don't exactly know what he looked like. We do, however, have some clues. One modern artist has tackled the mystery, and he has been kind enough to give me permission to share his work with you. Stay tuned...

Holbein the Younger and the Northern Renaissance

February is over, and another school term is upon us. I suppose that I ought to look forward to meeting a new artist, but I must admit the truth: I'm still grieving over having to say goodbye to Jacques Louis David. I find his paintings so compelling; they are a curious combination of thought-provoking and deeply emotional. We hang our prints in the dining room for the whole term, and I cannot keep my eye off David's paintings. I think my favorites of the ones we studies were Brutus and The Oath of the Horatii. I still can't decide whether I think they are passionate calls to patriotism, or skilled propaganda. Perhaps it's a little of both.

All that being said, time marches on and new art will be studied. This term, our artist is Hans Holbein the Younger. He was a German painter during the Renaissance. If you grew up thinking that the Renaissance happened only in Italy... well, so did I. Nope. We were wrong.

Germany was initially isolated from the changes that were stirring in Italy by the high Alps, which slowed the movement of people and ideas. The Northern Renaissance lagged nearly a century behind the familiar Italian changes, but it still brought forth a few important developments. A German named Johannes Gutenberg created a handy machine called the printing press. Martin Luther made waves in religious circles. The beautiful St. Michael's Church was constructed. Hans Holbein the Elder, Holbein's father, was pioneer in moving German art from the Gothic style into the new Renaissance style. In addition to a great many altar paintings, he also worked in woodcuts, illustrated books, and designed church windows. Other artists from the Northern Renaissance who might be familiar to you are Albrecht Dürer and Matthias Grünewald.

Interestingly enough, the German Renaissance was relatively short-lived, at least in terms of art. From the reading I'm doing, it looks like this was primarily because German had no Classical past to look back to. Italy was deeply tied to Roman culture—it's authors, artists, architects, and all it's contributions to Western civilization. Germany, on the other hand, didn't come into contact with Rome all that much. Lacking a personal connection, German artists simply didn't have the motivation that Mediterranean artists did.

Holbein the Younger is German, but he spent a lot of time outside of his native land. He traveled in Italy and France, and eventually settled in England. He is best known for his portraits. Humanist ideas combined with Protestant objections to religious art changed the content of paintings. When churches stopped commissioning art, portraits commissioned by well-heeled patrons became a necessity for artists who still needed to eat and buy paint. A study of human beings as fascinating individuals also fit into the philosophy of the time. Holbein's portraits focused on powerful, confident, well-educated men and women. His subjects included English royalty, ambassadors, merchants, churchman, author, and philosopher Sir Thomas More, as well as the famous scholar and philosopher Erasmus.

As always, my family uses the AmblesideOnline picture study rotation.  One of the things I love best about this rotation is that it exposes my kids (and me!) to many different styles and schools of art. While Durer's work didn't immediately appeal to me, I enjoyed reading and researching and placing him in his historical context. If you want to read further about the Northern Renaissance, check out this website. They also have a Timeline of Art that is helpful. It's not all that visually appealing (which is ironic, given that it's an art website), but there is a lot of fascinating information.

For our study of Holbein the Younger, I have created 8x10" prints that you can download here. If your kids keep a Book of Masterpieces, you can download 4x6" art cards here. I print all of our artwork on glossy cardstock. Both sets print on a standard-sized computer page, and will need to be trimmed to the desired size.

Several people have had problems with the old file hosting site I was using. This time, I am trying Dropbox. Please let me know what you think, so I know whether it is worth the trouble to switch my old files over to the new site. Thank you muchly.