Angels-GIOTTO

Traditionally, Giotto di Bondone (ca. 1267–1337) is known as the
hero of a naturalistic revolution that supposedly broke all bonds with
the Middle Ages and laid the foundations of modern painting. He is recognized as the first genius of art in the Italian Renaissance. His
work can be considered a synthesis of the discordant traditions of the
Middle Ages in the East and the West, from which traditions of Italian
art sprang.
Giotto di Bondone was born of a family of peasant stock around
1267 in a village in the Mugello area called Colle di Vespignano, a few
miles north of Florence. Between 1285 and 1290 he is thought to have
been apprenticed to Cimabue at Florence and to have traveled for the
first time to Rome.
In 1291 he started working in the Upper Church of San Francesco
in Assisi (Old and New Testament Cycles) on the uppermost tier of
the walls, in the first two bays near the entrance, and in 1297–99 he
painted the Franciscan Cycle in San Francesco. In 1300 he went to
Rome, where he painted Boniface the VIII Proclaims the Jubilee in the
basilica of St. John Lateran. During 1304–6 he painted the frescoes in
the Arena Chapel of the Scrovegni family in Padua. In the following
years he went to Florence several times, and in 1327 he enrolled in
the guild of Physicians and Apothecaries, to which artists had only
recently been admitted.
Various documents testify that between 1329 and 1333 Giotto
was in Naples, where he worked at the court of Robert of Anjou and
was admitted to the circle of the king’s intimate friends. In 1334 the
Florentine republic appointed him master of the works of the of the
cathedral and architect of the city walls and fortifications. He died in
Florence in 1337.
During the first three centuries of Christianity the representation
of angels was not permissible, and it is interesting that until the tenth
century angels in art were curiously draped. Giotto was the first to
approach the ideal representation of angels. His Birth of the Madonna
(1304–6) in the Scrovegni (also known as the Arena) Chapel in
Padua shows two naked erotes carrying a cockle-shaped medallion
with a bust of Christ. This is an entirely new use of the classical sarcophagus
motif. Angels are also represented in Giotto’s picture of the
Crucifixion, in which he introduced an element of absurdity by
depicting extremely human little angels tearing open their little
breasts in despair. In the Crucifixion, found in the Scrovegni Chapel at
Padua, the angel’s full-throated lament in the sky tends to expand
beyond all reasonable proportions if compared to the compact little
group in the lower area around the crucified.
For a long time there were no pictures of the Resurrection, its
treatment being confined to carvings in ivory, on shrines, and on
other small objects. The Resurrection was first painted by Giotto, as one of a series of small pictures upon a press for the sacred vessels in
the Church of Santa Croce in Florence (1297–1305). In this picture,
however, there are no angels. As with his fresco of the Resurrection,
in The Ascension, painted on the walls of the Scrovegni Chapel in
Padua, Giotto attempted to represent the scene in accordance with
scriptural description. In the center of the lower part of the picture are
two angels who with raised hands direct the attention of the kneeling
Virgin and groups of apostles, also kneeling, to Christ, already soaring
far above them, accompanied by numerous worshiping angels on both
sides at some distance from him. This fresco is much injured but is
highly valued for the sublimity of its composition.
The Stigmata of St. Francis (1300) shows St. Francis, who, as he
prays on the slope of Mount Vernia, sees the Savior in the form of a
crucified seraph and is impressed miraculously on his hands, feet, and right side with the stigmata of the Cross, as suffered by Jesus. The
power of this vision is so overwhelming that blood flows from the
palms and feet of the visionary, who for that moment is truly Christ
himself. In the Annunciation to St. Anne, in the Scrovegni Chapel, the
angel tells Anne that she will give birth to a child. A beautiful angel is
represented in the Sacrifice of Joachim, and in Joachim’s Dream an angel
appears to him in a dream and bids him go to Jerusalem, where by the
Golden Gate he will find his wife.
Several angels surrounding God are depicted in the upper part of
the Annunciation (Scrovegni Chapel), and the archangel Gabriel is
represented in the lower compartments, visiting the Virgin and
announcing to her that soon she will bear a divine child. Mourning the
Dead Christ, in which the two Marys, the apostles, and several angels
grieve over Christ’s body, is the most famous fresco of the whole cycle.
Multitudes of angels are portrayed in the Triumphal Arch, and in
the Last Judgment, a fresco which takes up the whole inner wall of the
Scrovegni Chapel’s front. In the upper part heaven is portrayed, with
angels and apostles; below are the elect led by the Virgin; on the lower
right is hell. At the center, lower area to the left of the Cross is the
offering of the chapel to the Virgin.
Both the mosaics titled Angel (1310) are part of the original Navicella
mosaic by Giotto in the portico of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome.
They represent St. Peter sailing in a storm and the Savior preventing
him and his ship from sinking. The two angels reproduced on these
mosaics, with their rich, graduated colors, were probably on the two
sides of an inscription under the Navicella. Angels are also depicted in
St. John on Patmos (the Peruzzi Chapel in the Church of Sta Croce,
Florence, 1310), which shows John, who, relegated to the isle of Patmos,
sees in a dream Jesus holding a scythe, the angel calling on time
to reap, the travailing woman pursued by a dragon, the mystic child in
its cradle, the angels, and the four beasts.