Just as Giotto carefully observed his father’s sheep, he carefully observ ed people. Giotto became well known for his skill in painting people with expression and emotion.
What is a fresco painting?
A fresco is created when paint is applied onto a wet plaster wall. A rough layer of plaster was applied to the stone walls of a church. A second smoother layer was painted over the section that was to be painted that day. The craftsman painted that section before the plaster dried. Because of this technique, one picture has many sections and you can often see these in good reproductions of the works of the time. Since many paintings covered the walls of large church buildings, the craftsmen often had to work on scaffolding, wooden planks that could be put up then taken down to be put in other areas. This illustration shows that the top left section has been completed in a previous day. Giotto and Cimabue start the second section.
Florentine patrons were very proud of how real their artists could make things look. They spread the story of how, as master artist Cimabue was out, young Giotto painted a fly on the nose of a figure 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 could paint!
Were you fooled by the fly on this page?
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