Giotto summoned to paint at Assisi

1304

The Florentine master labored in the upper basilica of San Francesco, rendering the life of Saint Francis in plaster and pigment. His figures breathed with a new naturalism - weight, grief, and tenderness rendered as no painter before him had managed - that would scandalize conservatives and electrify apprentices. The frescoes made Assisi a pilgrimage not just for the devout but for painters.