Among the early renaissance artist many left long lasting impressions on the artist to come, but none stood out more than the Florentine painter and architect, Giotto. An outstanding painter, sculptor, and architect he was recognized as the first geniuses of art in the Italian Renaissance. Giotto lived and worked at a time when people were beginning to be freed from the medieval restraints and he dealt in traditional religious subjects, which the people could relate with.

Giotto's most famous works is the Arena Chapel in Padua. In the year 1300, Enrico Scrovegni, a wealthy, merchant acquired the ruins of an old Roman arena with an adjoining chapel. Scrovegni wanted to use the chapel as a family place of worship. Five years after he obtained the Arena Chapel, Enrico Scrovegni charged Giotto with the job of painting the interior walls of the chapel. Giotto accepted the job and began work on the chapel immediately.

The walls of the chapel were both restricted and asymmetrical due to the six windows on the right wall. Giotto measured and decided to divide the walls into panels of the same size. In the panels Giotto painted a series of thirty-eight frescoes depicting the life of Chris

Giotto's style is showed in all of the paintings of the chapel except the Annunciation. He concentrated on the grasp of human emotion and of what was significant in human life. In concentrating on these essentials he created compelling pictures of people under stress, people caught up in crises, and soul-searching decisions. Giotto's direct and lucid style is evident in the early episodes of his narrative, which tells the story of Joachim and Anna, the Virgin's parents. In The Vision of Joachim, Giotto shows a praying father falling asleep and in a dream an angel comes to announce that his wife Anna is at last going to have a child. Giotto has painted a sleeping Joachim as a compact, passive form, wrapped in the draperies of his simple and common robe. Through the simplicity he never deviates from the emotional center of the scene. The other elements of the painting like the angel's gesture and the stance of the shepherd in the foreground point the viewer's eyes in the direct!

The Art Bulletin. March 1999. Vol 81. p93.

First, the mise-en-scene provided by Giotto for the two events sharply contrast. In the Apparition to Saint Anne, an angel descends into a well-lit, domestic interior with recognizable furnishings for everyday life. This shows Giotto 's interest in expanding his narrative through the inclusion of realistic detail, which is apparent in the rest of the narrative cycle. The Annunciation shows the Virgin in a very dark interior with little furniture or social indicators. This is very similar to mise-en-scenes of the early medieval church dramas, which contained only the stage properties that were necessary for the action. It would appear that the two scenes show two different types of i

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