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Giotto > 
Giotto has become the symbol of a profound renewal in the history of Western figurative arts, and of the first radical renewal since ancient Greece. "He converted the art of painting from Greek to Latin and brought in the modern era" - this is Cennino Cennini's synthesis fifty years after Giotto's death, underscoring the revolutionary character of Giotto's painting.
Born in 1267, he must have been active before the last decade of thirteenth century.
Giotto worked for the Bardi's and the Peruzzi's, the Florentine families who owned the most important European banks of the thirteenth century. He worked for the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi, which was the most important church of Christianity at the time; he worked for the Pope, for the richest and most influential citizen of Padova (Scrovegni), for the chapel and main altar of the Basilica of San Pietro in Rome, for the king of Napoli and for Azzone Visconti, the master of Milano. At a time when the exceptional Italian economic expansion turned every Italian city in a cultural center with specific characteristics and a potential artistic "school", Giotto placed himself in a super-regional position, becoming a universal reference point.
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