Dr. Rocky Ruggiero

Few artists in history have had an impact on their fields the way Giotto did in the 14th century.
Giorgio Vasari claimed “For after the many years during which the methods…of good painting had been buried…it was Giotto alone who…rescued and restored the art…” After nearly a millennium in which Byzantine-style pictorial forms dominated western art, Giotto, like his teacher Cimabue before him, turned to Nature as his guide. Giotto introduced convincing 3-dimesional settings, movement, drama, emotion, psychology and sculptural modeling to a world of painting that was by dominated by flat, abstract icons. Simply put, Giotto revolutionized painting. His innovations became the foundation of Western painting for centuries to come. The influence of Giotto can be seen in the works of artists such as Donatello, Masaccio, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Caravaggio, all the way up to Picasso, Rothko and Frank Stella. Giotto was, in the words of a 14th-century contemporary, the merchant Giovanni Villani, "the most sovereign master of painting in his time.”