GIOTTO di Bondone
(b. 1267, Vespignano, d. 1337, Firenze)

Scenes from the Life of St Francis: 2. Renunciation of Wordly Goods (detail)

1325-28
Fresco
Bardi Chapel, Santa Croce, Florence

In an early and surprising representation, an urban palazzo, with premonitions of the Renaissance and in a style truly unknown in its time, appears for the first time in this fresco. This invention of Giotto's, a happy expression of his artistic imagination and decidedly different from the closed and introverted appearance of contemporary medieval fortified houses, seems extraordinarily ahead of its time, innovative and suggestive of a classicising monumental approach to building.




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