GREGOIRE
JEANMONOD
Art and its stories as an inspiration
Giotto di Bondone
The Lamentation of Christ
Around 1305
Question conventions
The Tuscan Giotto di Bondone - or more simply Giotto - is often presented as the father of "modern" art, in the very broad sense of the term: with the hindsight of the centuries, it is believed that he embodies, more
than any other artist, the transition between
painting of the Middle Ages and that of the Re-
birth. He was notably the first to
m and being on stage interactive characters
lying with each other in a
careful dramaturgy , and to attribute to them
emotions identifiable with their gestures.
​
But one of the formal innovations
Giotto's most important as natural
as it may seem today, lies in his deliberate choice to paint blue skies. Indeed, art having at that time a purpose almost exclusively
religious, painters used to use the color gold to represent the sky, both it was admitted that all light was of divine essence. Giotto, at
beginning of the 14th century, understood that he
was time to upset this conven-
tion. For two centuries of movements
more and more heretics and
powerful threatened the spiritual hegemony
guardianship of the Vatican by offering
believers a more direct relationship with God, far
of Catholic liturgy and the curia
Roman. Giotto's idea was therefore to
suggest, by substituting for the golden sky sym-
bolique the blue sky that we perceive,
that the Catholic Church was not only concerned with abstract theological questions, but was also sensitive to the earthly concerns of the faithful.
Duccio, The Lamentation of Christ , 1308
What we can take away:
​
Our way of acting - and sometimes even of thinking - is partly determined by conventions whose legitimacy it is healthy to regularly question. Because if they made sense when they were established, it is possible that the evolution of society has made them obsolete. In this case we can free ourselves from it, and thus get out of the norm to explore new possibilities.
