THE 13TH CENTURY
❚Diversity of style characterizes the art of 13th-century Italy, with some artists working in the newly
revived classical tradition, some in the mode of Gothic France, and others in the maniera greca,
or Italo-Byzantine style.
❚Trained in southern Italy in the court style of Frederick II (r. 1197–1250), Nicola Pisano was a master
sculptor who settled in Pisa and carved pulpits incorporating marble panels that, both stylistically
and in individual motifs, depend on ancient Roman sarcophagi.
❚Nicola’s son, Giovanni Pisano, also was a sculptor of church pulpits, but his work more closely
reflects the Gothic sculpture of France.
❚The leading painters working in the Italo-Byzantine style were Bonaventura Berlinghieri and
Cimabue. Both artists drew inspiration from Byzantine icons and illuminated manuscripts.
Berlinghieri’s Saint Francis Altarpieceis the earliest dated portrayal of Saint Francis of Assisi,
who died in 1226.
THE 14TH CENTURY
❚During the 14th century, Italy suffered the most devastating natural disaster in European history—
the Black Death that swept through Europe—but it was also the time when Renaissance humanism
took root. Although religion continued to occupy a primary position in Italian life, scholars and
artists became much more concerned with the natural world.
❚Giotto di Bondone of Florence, widely regarded as the first Renaissance painter, was a pioneer
in pursuing a naturalistic approach to representation based on observation, which was at the core
of the classical tradition in art. The Renaissance marked the rebirth of classical values in art and
society.
❚The greatest master of the Sienese school of painting was Duccio di Buoninsegna, whose Maestà
still incorporates many elements of the maniera greca.He relaxed the frontality and rigidity of his
figures, however, and in narrative scenes took a decisive step toward humanizing religious subject
matter by depicting actors displaying individual emotions.
❚Secular themes also came to the fore in 14th-century Italy, most notably in Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s
frescoes for Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico. His depictions of the city and its surrounding countryside are
among the first landscapes in Western art since antiquity.
❚The 14th-century architecture of Italy underscores the regional character of late medieval art. Some
architectural historians even have questioned whether it is proper to speak of Italian buildings of
this period as Gothic structures. Orvieto Cathedral’s facade, for example, imitates some elements
of the French Gothic vocabulary, but it is merely an overlay masking a traditional timber-roofed
structure with round arches in the nave arcade.
THE BIG PICTURE
ITALY, 1200 TO 1400
Nicola Pisano, Pisa baptistery pulpit,
1259–1260Berlinghieri,
Saint Francis Altarpiece, 1235Giotto, Arena Chapel, Padua,
ca. 1305Duccio, Maestà,Siena Cathedral,
1308–1311Orvieto Cathedral,
begun 1310