"This book provides a survey of European painting between 1260 and 1510, in both northern and southern Europe, based largely on the National Gallery collection ... some 70 of the finest and best known paintings in the Gallery are examined in detail"--Cover.

"The authors look closely at a variety of types of painting - including large altarpieces, small domestic, devotional images, diplomatic gifts, furniture, decorations and both intimate and full-length portraits - as well as frescoes, drawings and prints. They provide insights into the meanings of individual pictures and into the purposes they were originally intended to serve, and they explore the social position of the artist in the 1500s.

Eight-year-old Giotto the shepherd boy confesses his dream of becoming an artist to the painter Cimabue, who teaches him how to make marvelous pigments from minerals, flowers, and eggs and takes him on as his pupil.

The artist who influenced the whole of the Italian Renaissance, of whom Vasari wrote "GIOTTO restored the link between art and nature."

This book is divided into two parts, the first presenting new evidence and reconstructions of the chapel's design and early history; the second offering new interpretations of Giotto's frescoes. Appendices present original sources, all of which are newly-discovered, unpublished or previously published in inaccessible editions. An outline of the early history of the Scrovegni family and the career of the chapel's patron, Enrico Scrovegni, introduces the first part of the book. It is argued that the chapel's varied functions played an important part in determining the form of the building and the content of its frescoes. A complete reconstruction of the appearance of the Arena Chapel at the time of its consecration in 1305 forms the basis for an entirely new understanding of Giotto's frescoes. Giotto was the architect of the Arena Chapel, architecture and decoration were completely integrated in his design. Changes in the design brief during the period 1300-1305 prevented the full realization of his design. Some of the paintings now seen in the Arena Chapel, which have always been attributed to Giotto, are not in fact by him. Several independent masters worked under Giotto's direction. He headed a flexibly-organized workshop. Part II is introduced by a discussion of the frescoes that would be encountered by visitors to the Arena Chapel. These frescoes were deliberately placed in these positions by Giotto in order to further a process of luminal transformation upon entry into sacred space. Giotto employed radically new compositional devices to evoke correspondences between the pictured protagonists in their fictive environments, and viewers in the real environment of the chapel. Dr. Laura Jacobus' research interests cover various aspects of Italian visual culture during the period c.1250-1450. She teaches at Birkbeck University of London.

Publisher Description

Give the gift of art with this beautifully illustrated volume tracing the development of European painting over six centuries through one hundred pictures--each significant and by a different artist