Giotto’s Arena Chapel, Essay Example

Giotto, a Florentine artist from the early 14th century, is famous for his painting of various biblical scenes on the walls and ceilings of the Arena Chapel in Venito, Italy. Giotto had a new approach to realism and naturalism in painting and transformed the tiny, barrel-vaulted chamber into a theater in which the individual scenes, lit from the west and viewed from the center, appear to take place in real space. Giotto’s work was much more realistic and three dimensional, using the gestures and positions of the figures to add to the realism of the work. This was a new shift for paintings of the time and was much more representational and realistic than works painted previously- the Arena Chapel is Giotto’s most famous work for good reason.

Masaccio and Frangelico- Compare and Contrast

Masaccio, also known as Tommaso Guidi, was a Florentine painter who was one of the first artists to master the style and spatial devices of Brunelleschi. Masaccio’s Trinity with the Virgin, as well as Masaccio’s Tribute Money reflect Masaccio’s mastery of the new perspective system being used by artists. Vanishing points, converging lines and well composed subjects gave his work a sense of realism and allowed him to capture real space in a painting.

Fra Angelico is an Italian Renaissance painter credited with painting the Altarpiece for St. Marco’s, in Florence, as well as the frescoes of the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament at St Peter’s. Fra Angelico was working at a time when the style of art was undergoing a state of change. Unlike Masaccio, Fra Angelico was the contemporary of Gentile da Fabriano. The works of Fra Angelico reveal elements that are both conservatively Gothic and progressively Renaissance.