Giotto Di Bondones Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints - Essay Example

1305 – 1310 (Olga’s). Rendered with tempera on wood panel, this amply dimensioned painting depicts Giotto’s version of the Virgin with her Holy Infant being surrounded by the angelic entities whose spatial orientation appears to enhance the already magnified theme by the enormous significance which Giotto necessitated for the size of the subject at the center to possess. The contour and definitiveness of the black veil which highly contrasts the mild flesh suit of her child indicates how the Madonna, in the simplicity of her aura and strength in character as a mother, manages to secure the innocent even to beyond a physical warm keeping.

The delicate treatment given to the shapes especially of the painting’s chief concerns and the shades cast about the throne seemingly manifest gradual departure from the Byzantine standards so as to entertain a style which takes to greater consideration keen details of human sentiment. This naturalist approach may be observed to have been pioneered by Giotto Di Bondone in the way he worked with colors and symbolic arrangement of figures in space which chiefly acquired a linear perspective to serve his purpose of radiating inner human experience.

Such modifications in the convention of Western art can be attributed to the essence of marking a transition from the grieving centuries of the Middle Ages to the much sought-after tranquility in the time of Renaissance by which intellectual restoration in arts, sciences, and humanities flourished. Since this period entailed new hopes for the European nations awaiting for enlightenment to be ushered back in full measure, Giotto took the opportunity of getting critical attention in his involvement with artistic reformation which may be perceived in most of his murals and frescoes (Giotto-The Inventor).

The undertones of past suffering during the Dark Ages through the chosen mood of shades and the artist’s strokes of varying sharpness or lightness signify Giotto’s innovative contribution in allowing discernment of certain relevant human emotions flow out of the general impression the enthroned structure makes. It particularly responds to the summon of Renaissance for people to obtain back their religious faith and reverence toward the church and its superior role of resolving medieval lack of spiritual vitality as one further understands the painter’s idea of substantial expansion when Giotto seated the Madonna and child on the throne for which he provided a generous portion of space which likely represents the continuous sensibility of religion and the adherence to the struggling progress of Christianity.

The ability to achieve prominence and the desired stimulus in the simplicity of style or in less intricate patterns may have influenced the 15th century contemporaries of Giotto Di Bondone to acquire similar interest of attaining to flexibility of form. As such, the three-dimensional persuasion of Leonardo Da Vinci in ‘The Virgin of the Rocks’, c. 1491-1508, made central the well-lighted faces to locate emphasis upon a sublime moment of holiness and humility in the manner the head of each essential character is bent down.

As the painting expresses a dramatic effect which can be emotionally identified as either peace or compassion, Da Vinci rather strayed the audience from the original knowledge of the Virgin’s Immaculate Conception into a new concept (The Virgin) like how Giotto did justice to enthroning the plain situation of the virgin with the child to most probably suggest a sense of vision that must remain in thought and practice of all Italians. With Giotto’s type of profound creativity to follow, Da Vinci apparently fashioned