Episode Details

Giotto di Bondone painted human figures with emotions so recognizable that people wept in front of them — something no painter in medieval Europe had achieved. Before Giotto, painted figures were flat, stylized, and symbolic. After Giotto, they grieved, raged, and embraced like real people. He single-handedly began the revolution that led to the Renaissance.

This episode traces Giotto from his legendary discovery as a shepherd boy drawing on rocks through the Scrovegni Chapel frescoes, his friendship with Dante, and the artistic revolution he started two centuries before it had a name.

• His frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua are considered the birth of modern Western painting
• According to legend, he was discovered as a shepherd boy drawing a sheep on a rock by the painter Cimabue
• Dante praised him in the Divine Comedy as the artist who eclipsed his master Cimabue
• He introduced naturalistic emotion, three-dimensional space, and human psychology into European painting for the first time