Giotto di Bondone

Italian painter Giotto di Bondone (c.1267-1337) revolutionized Western art by breaking from the flat, stylized Byzantine tradition toward naturalistic representation. He's generally considered the first in a line of great artists who contributed to the Renaissance. His figures display unprecedented emotional depth and occupy believable three-dimensional space. Giorgio Vasari credited Giotto with initiating "the great art of painting as we know it today, introducing the technique of drawing accurately from life."

According to legend, the master painter Cimabue discovered young Giotto drawing his sheep on a rock so realistically that he took him as an apprentice. Giotto's masterwork, the Scrovegni (Arena) Chapel frescoes in Padua (c.1305), depicts the lives of Christ and the Virgin with revolutionary naturalism. He included Halley's Comet, visible in 1301, as the Star of Bethlehem. His frescoes at Santa Croce in Florence influenced Masaccio and were studied by Michelangelo. In 1334, Florence appointed him architect for the cathedral campanile. Upon his death in 1337, Florence gave him a state funeral, the first artist so honored. His frescoes remain in situ at the Scrovegni Chapel and Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi.