14th Century Art in Europe

Question 1

Virgin and Child Enthroned c. 1280 (Cimabue)

Answer 1

Mary’s huge throne, painted to resemble gilded bronze with inset enamels and gems, provides an architectural framework for the figures

Cimabue creates highlights on the drapery of Mary, Jesus, and the angels with thin lines of gold, as if to capture their divine radiance

The viewer seems suspended in space in front of the image, simultaneously looking down on the projecting elements of the throne and Mary’s lap and looking straight ahead at the prophets at the base of the throne and the angels at each side

Cimabue’s ambitious attention to spatial volumes, his use of delicate light-to-dark modeling to simulate three-dimensional form, and his efforts to give naturalistic warmth to human figures had an impact on future Florentine painting

Question 2

Giotto di
Bondone VIRGIN AND
CHILD ENTHRONED
Most likely painted for the
high altar of the church of
the Ognissanti (All
Saints),
Florence. 1305-1310

Answer 2

The painting depicts the Virgin Mary and Jesus surrounded by saints and angels.
The painting’s figures are more human and plausible than previous paintings.
The folds of the garments outline the volume of the bodies.
The painting’s throne is on a horizontal support approached by steps

After a sojourn in Rome during the last years of the thirteenth century, he was called to Padua in northern Italy soon after 1300 to paint frescos (see “Fresco”) for a new chapel being constructed at the site of an ancient Roman arena—explaining why it is often referred to as the Arena Chapel. The chapel was commissioned by Enrico Scrovegni, whose family fortune was made through the practice of usury, or charging interest when loaning money, a sin considered so grave at the time that it resulted in exclusion from the Christian sacraments

Question 3

Giotto di
Bondone SCROVEGNI (ARENA) CHAPEL,
Padua. 1305-1306. Frescos

Answer 3

Giotto di Bondone’s frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy depict scenes from the life of Jesus and the Virgin Mary

Set into this framework are three horizontal bands of rectangular narrative scenes from the life of the Virgin and her parents at the top and Jesus along the middle and lower registers, which make up the primary religious program of the chapel

Both the individual scenes and the overall program display Giotto’s genius for distilling complex stories into a series of compelling moments

Question 4

Giotto, Kiss of Judas

Answer 4

Judas reaches out to kiss Jesus, identifying him to the crowd of armed men who have come to arrest him.
Jesus stands calmly resigned to his fate, while everyone else in the painting is in some state of dramatic action.

Question 5

Ambrogio Lorenzetti THE EFFECTS OF GOOD GOVERNMENT IN THE CITY AND IN THE COUNTRY

Answer 5

The world of the Italian city-states—which had seemed so full of promise in Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Good Government fresco—was transformed into uncertainty and desolation by a series of natural and societal disasters as the middle of the century approached. In 1333, a flood devastated Florence, followed by banking failures in the 1340s, famine in 1346–1347, and epidemics of the bubonic plague, especially virulent in the summer of 1348

Yet as dark as those days must have seemed to the men and women living through them, the cultural and artistic changes initiated earlier in the century would persist. In a relatively short span of time, the European Middle Ages gave way in Florence to a new movement that would blossom in the Italian Renaissance