As we continued looking at Italian liturgical artworks, we examined the resemblance, or rather, inspiration being taken by one artist of another – as in the case of Giotto’s and Cimabue’s Madonna Enthroned altarpieces, while also seeing the differentiation of these pieces, in terms of style and their different approach to telling a narrative. Cimabue aimed to represent the divine by referring to ideas and suggestions of reality, while still trying to bridge the ancient origin (the Hebrew text) and the new iteration of the text (by depicting the old prophets as pillars of the church itself. Giotto, however, went further into realism and created a sense of harmony through interaction of different players in the painting – the angels overlapping each other, looking at the Virgin… He also rendered the painting much more realistically, creating a sense of volume and weight to the fabric and the figures. In some sense, Giotto’s general stylistic approach seems more emotional, more grounded. This is proven even further by his Lamentation, in his creative usage of space and corner-heavy composition, Giotto pulled the viewers in and had them observe the emotional weight of the event.
Moving over to the 15th century in Europe, we looked at a few pieces in the Burgundy aristocrat’s collection, one of those being The Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (subtle), or the book of hours that belongs to the Duke of Berry – apparently one of the best art collector of all time (?). In many of these paintings, the ground was tilted up, allowing for more space to represent and depict more subjects. This emphasis on creating as many details of the story as possible is presented in the very way one of the walls is removed to show the viewers its inside – realism, then, is a hindrance to observation (even though the painters, Pol de Limbourg and his brothers, Herman and Jean, did still render the figures quite realistically).