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Kirkus Book Review

This concise monograph on the revolutionary Trecento artist whose introduction of human values into iconographic painting prefigured the Italian Renaissance will find its readership among serious students of art history. Bruce Cole, professor of Art at Indiana University, alternates between heaping accolades of praise on the ""nearly perfect"" frescoes of Giotto di Bondone and, more often, articulating the spatial and chromatic subtleties of his technique in that formal style of disquisition native to the lecture hall. Part of the difficulty in bringing his subject to life is that virtually no documentation of Giotto's activities has come down to us, save for a few business transactions, although Cole and other scholars have deduced a chronology of his development from apprentice workshop (possibly Cimabue's) to the masterpieces of the Arena Chapel. (Cole also considers the dubious attribution of the Assisi frescoes to the artist.) Giotto was nonetheless the first artist to emerge as an individual from the anonymity of the workshop tradition, a great cultural hero of Florence who was honored by Dante in his lifetime and whose reputation has not diminished. The 57 illustrations may make the text more pertinent and accessible. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.