Giotto Giotto di Bondone, JAH toh, (1267–1337)
Lesson 3
Giotto helped his father watch over the sheep. The sheep grazed in green fields all day so Giotto had lots of time as a young boy to think, dream, and to discover. Do you have a place to go where you can think or daydream with no particular purpose in mind? Young Giotto discovered that he had artistic talent in just such a place. PREP NOTES FOR LESSON 3 Plan a place where you and your child can stand in front of a mirror. In classroom situations, children can simply observe each other. Explore gestures, as explained on the project page. Act out the three ways to show movement so that children can see these movements in the human form. These types of observations will help them to be more expressive in their artwork.
As young Giotto opened the gates of the pen that kept his father’s sheep safe from wolves and bears, the sheep sprung forward. They made their way to the mint that covered the Italian hillside. Giotto followed them up the hills and into a meadow filled with yellow daisies and licorice plants. He watched for a time. However, like all young boys assigned to such tiresome tasks, he spent most of his day leaping from boulders that jutted out from the landscape. He threw stones at small targets that he’d carved onto rocky outcroppings. As he picked up a small rock to practice his aim, he noticed that the circles he’d scratched onto the rocks looked like a herd of sheep. Giotto gazed at the sheep. Then a great impulse overtook
him. Turning a rock’s sharper edge outward, he began scratching onto a flat stone. He drew sheep! Giotto was amazed at the way lines turned into pictures of the sheep that grazed on the hillside. In the days and years that followed, he filled stone slabs with many pictures of sheep. Giotto drew each day until his skills became quite good. One day Cimabue, the famous painter we met in the last story, became curious about the boy who carried the stone tablets. He introduced himself and Giotto showed Cimabue his art on stone. His “talent impressed Cimabue so much that he made Giotto his apprentice” (Rabiner 193). As an apprentice, Giotto worked for Cimabue without pay, while he learned how to paint like an artist. Giotto practiced all that Cimabue taught him. Florentine patrons were very proud of how real their artists could make things look. They spread a story of how, as Cimabue was out, young Giotto painted a fly on the nose of a figure that Cimabue had been working on. When Cimabue returned, he tried many times to brush the fly away before realizing Giotto’s trick. And that was how well Giotto painted! Were you fooled by the fly on this page? Just as Giotto carefully observed his father’s sheep, he carefully observed people. Giotto became well known for his skill in painting people with expression and emotion.
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