Giotto di Bondone, one of the greatest of the early Italian painters, and also celebrated as an architect, was born probably in 1266, though Vasari gives the year as 1276, at the village of Vespignano, 14 miles from Florence. At the age of ten he was discovered by Cimabue, tending his father's flocks, and drawing one of the lambs upon a flat stone, and was by him taken to Florence and instructed in art. The master was then at the height of his fame; he had infused new life into the old Byzantine forms which were current in the art of the time, introducing more of nature, and greater variety and truth of form and expression; and the changes which he inaugurated were, with far greater power, carried towards perfection by his gifted pupil, who introduced a close imitation of nature, a vivid and dramatic realisation of subject, more satisfying and varied composition, a broader distribution of masses, and greater lightness of colouring. The first of Giotto's independent works, such as those which Vasari states that he executed in the Badia of Florence, have perished; and the earliest that have been preserved are a series of twenty-eight frescoes, scenes from the life of St Francis, in the aisle of the Upper Church at Assisi. The 'St Francis in Glory,' and the noble allegorical subjects of 'Poverty,' 'Chastity,' and 'Obedience,' on the ceilings of the Lower Church, mark the increasing strength of the painter. They are assigned by Crowe and Cavalcaselle to the year 1296, though probably they are the work of a later period. Two years afterwards he was employed in Rome by the Cardinal Stefaneschi, designing among other works the mosaic of the 'Navicella,' which, utterly restored, may still be seen in the vestibule of St Peter's. In 1300-2 we trace him at work in Florence, taking part in the execution of a series of frescoes—a 'Paradise,' an 'Inferno,' and scenes from the life of Saints Magdalen and Mary of Egypt, in the Bargello (now the Museo Nazionale). In the 'Paradise' he introduced portraits of Brunetti Latini, Corso Donati the celebrated Neri leader, Charles of Valois, Cardinal d'Acquasparta, and, above all, a profile likeness of his friend Dante, whose acquaintance he had made in Rome, and who refers to the painter in canto xi. of the Purgatorio. These works were long concealed by whitewash, which was removed in the 19th century. The head of Dante has been repainted in an incorrect and misleading manner; but an accurate tracing had previously been made by Mr Seymour Kirkup, and this has been reproduced by the Arundel Society.
The next great series of works by Giotto is the frescoes in the Annunziata dell'Arena Chapel, founded by Enrico Scrovegni at Padua. Here we find the artist rising to his highest power, and realising the scenes of sacred history and legend with a directness and an intensity such as had not hitherto appeared in Italian art. The frescoes comprise thirty-eight subjects from the lives of the Virgin and Christ, as related in the apocryphal and canonical gospels, a 'Christ in Glory,' a 'Last Judgment,' and a series of fourteen single figures personifying the cardinal virtues and their opponent vices. In 1306, during the progress of these works, Dante, then in exile, visited Giotto at Padua, and it has been believed that the treatment of the symbolical subjects, which are executed with extreme care, doubtless entirely by the master's own hand, embodies suggestions received from the great poet. Engravings of the Arena Chapel frescoes, with valuable letterpress by Mr Ruskin, have been published by the Arundel Society. No traces survive of the works which, according to Vasari, Giotto afterwards executed in Verona and Ferrara; but the frescoes with which, after 1307, he decorated the Peruzzi and Bardi Chapels in the church of Santa Croce, Florence, have been disclosed by the removal of the whitewash which concealed them for nearly two centuries, and which still covers his works in the Giugni and the Tosinghi and Spinelli Chapels in the same church. The Peruzzi frescoes, scenes from the lives of St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist, mark the culminating point of the painter's genius—they are masterpieces which 'clear contemporary admirers from the charge of exaggerated admiration and unwarranted flattery,' and 'justify all that has been said respecting the grandeur of his style.' The noble 'Coronation of the Virgin,' in tempera upon panel, in the Baroncelli Chapel of Santa Croce, is another work of about the same period. From 1330 to 1333 Giotto was employed in Naples by King Robert. Here he exercised a powerful influence upon artistic production, but only one fragment from his hand—a fresco in the old convent of Santa Chiara—remains; the subjects of 'The Seven Sacraments' in the Chapel of the Incononata being now attributed to an unknown follower of the painter. In 1334 he was appointed master of works of the cathedral and city of Florence. Aided by Andrea Pisano he decorated the façade of the cathedral with statues, and designed the exquisite isolated Campanile (q.v.) and the vivid bas-reliefs which adorn its base. This tower was completed after his death, at Florence, 8th January 1336.
The personal anecdotes of Giotto that have been preserved by Boccaccio, Sacchetti, and other writers, show him to have been a shrewd homely personage, with an excellent sense of humour, and a ready power of repartee. Vasari tells the often-quoted story of 'the O of Giotto'—how when the pope sent a messenger to ask the painter for a specimen of his art in view of a proposed commission, 'Giotto, who was very courteous, took a sheet of paper and a pencil dipped in red colour, then resting his elbow on his side, to form a sort of compass, with one turn of his hand he drew a circle so perfect and exact that it was a marvel to behold,' and handed this to the courtier as a sufficient proof of his technical skill. In spite of some discrepancies of detail there appears to be a basis of truth in the story, which has originated the Italian phrase, 'As round as Giotto's O'. See H. Quilter's Giotto (Lond. 1880).