Giotto, or Beauty in Space

Giotto painted facts. This was immediately clear to his contemporaries. Filippo Villani wrote that the figures in Giotto’s paintings perform actions “with such precision that they actually seem to be talking, crying, rejoicing”. This observation needs to be considered in its proper context. First of all, to paint “facts” means to capture human actions in a fixed instant – because, of course, painting movements is simply impossible: in painting, “you cannot paint even the shaking of the head we use in the West for ‘no’”. Secondly, Giotto had to paint facts that in most cases do not follow what we, broadly speaking, call the “laws of nature”. Giotto had to paint mostly sacred history,6 so prophetic dreams, miracles, apparitions, resurrections, ascensions. These “facts” are, for the most part, not facts at all; they are not part of “reality” as we consider it, or even as Giotto’s contemporaries considered it. More than anything, these “facts” are a suspension of reality. So, Giotto painted facts that happened, and happened in reality, even though they happened in reality as a suspension of reality. Third, the facts painted by Giotto are ones known to everybody. Giotto’s clients as well as his audience knew – of course, to various degrees – the stories of Isaac, Joachim, the Virgin Mary, Christ and St Francis. Giotto’s paintings are certainly part of a narration (in Assisi there is even text below the paintings that explains the stories), but the informative content of these paintings is non-existent. Giotto’s paintings do not communicate any new information; rather, they just repeat what is already known. The presupposition of all of this art is that everyone already knows everything.