A central figure of the Early Renaissance

According to legend, he was discovered by Cimabue as a boy, sketching his father`s sheep. Giotto di Bondone (1266-1337) was the most famous and influential painter of his generation in Italy. As the pioneer of modern painting, his impact was so enormous that his artist colleagues in Florence, however capable, were left struggling to keep up. His services were engaged by numerous high officials and princes, including the Pope and his cardinals, King Robert of Anjou, and the Scaligeri and Visconti. All these works, including the large secular cycles, are lost. Amongst his surviving works, his masterpieces are undoubtedly his decoration, from 1303 to 1305, of the private chapel built by the financier Enrico Scrovegni for his family in a former Roman amphitheatre in Padua, the fresco cycle in the Upper Church of Assisi, and the frescos in side chapels of Santa Croce in Florence. The simplicity and strength of his forms, as well as the humanism he infused in his works, set him apart from his Byzantine contemporaries and at the forefront of Italian painting in the early years of the Renaissance.

About the Series:
Every book in TASCHEN's Basic Art Series features:

a detailed chronological summary of the artist's life and work, covering the cultural and historical importance of the artist
approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions
a concise biography

About the author:
Norbert Wolf studied art history, linguistics, and medieval studies at the universities of Regensburg and Munich. He took his doctorate in art history in 1983. In 1992 he wrote his professorial thesis in Munich on carved 14th-century retables. Subsequently he held visiting professorships in Marburg, Frankfurt a.M., Leipzig, Düsseldorf, Nuremberg-Erlangen, and Innsbruck. He has written extensively on art history, including the many titles for TASCHEN, such as Diego Velázquez, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Caspar David Friedrich, Expressionism, Romanesque, Landscape Painting.