Cimabue – Giotto – Duccio

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Cimabue – Giotto – Duccio, how important are they? You simply have to visit the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Hall 2 to be more specific, stand in front of these three monumental panels and allow their masters to take you on a trip to the late 13th, early 14th century revolutionary Italian Painting.

According to Giorgio Vasari,“…instead of paying attention to his literary studies, Cimabue, as if inspired by his nature, spent the whole day drawing men, horses, houses and various other fantasies in his books and papers.” Cenni di Pepo, known as Cimabue, is recognized as the last painter of the Italo-Byzantine style. Yet. he is credited to step forward in moving his art towards achieving the first hint of naturalism, paving the way for the next generation of great Italian masters.

O vanity of human powers, how briefly lasts the crowning green of glory, unless an age of darkness follows! In painting Cimabue thought he held the field but now it’s Giotto has the cry, so that the other’s fame is dimmed. Writes about Giotto, the poet Dante in Canto XI of his Purgatorio, and he is so right. Giotto creates “a new kind of pictorial space with an almost measurable depth” and figures that are “volumetric rather than linear” expressing “varied and convincingly human rather than stylized” emotions. Justifiably, Giotto is considered the father of modern European painting. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/iptg/hd_iptg.htm

“Duccio, painter of Siena and much esteemed, deserved to carry off the palm (of an inventor in the Arts) from those who came many years after him…” writes Giorgio Vasari in his book The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Today, Duccio Duccio is considered to bring through his art elegance, lyricism, and spirituality along with spatial complexity and refined use of colours.

There are two Uffizi Gallery sites you simply need to visit: https://www.visituffizi.org/halls/hall-2-of-giotto-and-the-13th-century/ and https://www.virtualuffizi.com/13th-century-and-giotto-room.html

For a student Activity, my Grade 9 Art History students enjoy… click HERE!

A PowerPoint on the three Madonnas is… HERE!

Leonardo da Vinci

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La Belle Ferronnière (detail), 1495 – 1499, oil on wood, 62 cm × 44 cm, Louvre Museum, Paris Photo Copyright: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50127095
…and her mesmerizing eyes

Five hundred years ago, one of the greatest Renaissance Homo Universalis passed away at the Château du Clos Lucé, in the Loire Valley. The Louvre Museum, wishing to commemorate the fifth centenary of the artist’s death, organizes an International Retrospective Exhibition on Leonardo da Vinci and his oeuvre. https://www.louvre.fr/en/expositions/leonardo-da-vinci

The Louvre Museum in Paris holds the largest collection in the world of the artist’s paintings, five of the fourteen to seventeen paintings now attributed to Leonardo, as well as 22 drawings. This collection is the core of the Retrospective that will also present “the latest research findings, critical editions of key documents and the results of the latest analysis carried out in laboratories or during recent conservation treatment by the Louvre.” https://www.louvre.fr/en/leonardo-da-vinci

A unique feature that the Exhibition presents to its visitors is the Virtual Reality experience for the Mona Lisa painting, the first of its kind at the Louvre. Virtual Reality enables visitors to go through the glass-case that protects the Mona Lisa and see minute details within the painting invisible otherwise to the naked eye. https://arts.vive.com/us/articles/projects/art-photography/mona_lisa_beyond_the_glass/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au_UpzhzHwk

The PowerPoint I use for my Art History class on the artist… is HERE!

Renaissance Triptych… fresh

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Duccio di Buoninsegna, Sienese, c. 1255 – 1318
The Nativity with the Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel, a component of the original Maestà, 1308/1311, tempera on a single panel, NGA, Washington, DC

Renaissance Triptych… fresh is a RWAP (Research-Writing-Art-Project) designed for my high school elective class on Art History. It touches upon Sienese 14th century Art, Duccio, the great master of the time, his most important oeuvre, the Maestà altarpiece, and Triptych Icons.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines Triptych as “a picture (such as an altarpiece) or carving in three panels side by side.” It further defines Triptych as having Greek roots. “Triptych derives from the Greek triptychos (“having three folds”), formed by combining tri- (“three”) and ptychē (“fold” or “layer”),” and it continues “although triptych originally described a specific type of Roman writing tablet that had three hinged sections, it is not surprising that the idea was generalized first to a type of painting, and then to anything composed of three parts.” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/triptych

Wonderful information on Duccio’s Maestà can be accessed at https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.10.html and basically https://www.nga.gov/collection/highlights/duccio-the-nativity-with-the-prophets-isaiah-and-ezekiel.html

“On the day on which it was carried to the Duomo, the shops were locked up . . . and all the populace and all the most worthy were in order next to the said panel with lights lit in their hands, and then behind were women and children with much devotion; and they accompanied it right to the Duomo . . . sounding all the bells in glory out of devotion for such a noble panel as was this.” Anonymous mid-14th-century description of a procession to carry Duccio’s Maestà from the artist’s studio to the Siena Cathedral (L. A. Muratori, Rerum italiarum scriptores (Bologna, 1931–1939), xv/6, 90

The Renaissance Triptych… fresh RWAP is… HERE!

For a PP on Student work inspired by Renaissance Triptych… fresh RWAP, please… check HERE!