Giotto Dies: Father of Western Painting
Giotto di Bondone died after a career that broke Western art free from the flat, symbolic conventions of the Byzantine tradition. His frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel introduced naturalistic emotion, three-dimensional space, and human drama to painting for the first time. Every Renaissance master from Masaccio to Michelangelo built directly on the foundation Giotto established.
January 8, 1337
689 years ago
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