Feel like my education has been lacking… And I have been to Florence and still ignorant!

Giotto was revolutionary, according to Kenneth Clarke. Art (Byzantine) before that had been decorative – busy, fancy – he simplified the backgrounds to concentrate on the story, he painted actual people, with 3D solidity and natural looking garments. My Still life book said without Cimabue, you wouldn’t have had Giotto, but let’s not get distracted. He also started using perspective properly.

Probably most famous for the campanile for the Duomo in Florence (dome by Brunelleschi). His best art is to be found at the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. Mentioned (praised) in the Divine Comedy, Dante was alive at same time.

Duccio was from Siena. He did the typical egg tempera and gold leaf on wood panel thing – but more experimental and realistic. One of the first to put characters in among architecture. His most famous work is the Maesta in the Museo dell’Opera, massive, complex, more than 40 different parts to the original (both sides) – National Gallery in London has a couple. Did the Rose window of the Duomo in Siena too.

After Duccio came others to form a Sienese school, distinct from Florence for a couple of centuries, even though Siena was declining politically and economically.

Simone Martini did the massive Maesta fresco at the Palazzo Publicco, considered a classic of 14th century Italian art. On the opposite wall is Guidoricio da Foliagno with 2 castles in the background – my guidebook said this was the first landscape painting in history but no one else seems to think so. More interestingly is that in 1979 an earlier fresco was discovered just below it, damaged by the missing rotating globe art after which the room is named. So now it is unclear whether the one above is by Simone Martini or the one beneath (the Palazzo itself says the one underneath is by Duccio).

The Allegories of Good and Bad Government frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti were unfortunately closed to the public when we visited.