formal, like those of his master and the quattrocento painters generally; but he very soon enlarged his manner, and combined good light and shade with good colour, producing a grander and softer effect than had hitherto been attained. He is said to have been led to the development of chiaroscuro through seeing some of the works of Leonardo da Vinci. He had a great taste for colour, and lost no opportunity of producing rich effects by means of it. He seems to have been the first to imitate the real texture of stuffs; he painted his draperies from the actual material, and imitated as nearly as possible their various substances. Giorgione executed several extensive frescoes, some historical pictures in oil, and many portraits. Like many artists of the period, he was also in the habit of painting panels for various articles of ornamental furniture, frequently representing tales from Ovid, and enriching the backgrounds with appropriate landscapes, a branch in which he had a skill quite before his time. Titian, however, eventually surpassed him. The most important of his remaining works are portraits. Of these Du Fresnoy has noticed the good dressing; and he adds that but for Giorgione, Titian would never have attained that perfection which was the consequence of the rivalship and jealousy between them. The reputation of Giorgione would have been doubtless much greater than it is, had he not died so young; he did not complete his thirty-fourth year. He died in 1511, and, as was supposed, of the plague; but Ridolfi mentions also the report that he died of mortification, his scholar, or rather assistant, Morto da Feltro having seduced and carried off his mistress. Sebastian del Piombo, Giovanni da Udine, and other celebrated painters, were scholars of Giorgione. There is a fresco by him in the Monte di Pietà at Treviso representing the "Entombment;" in the Louvre is a "Rural Concert" in oil; and there is a small figure of a knight in the National Gallery, all of which are characteristic specimens.—(Vasari, Vite, &c.; Ridolfi, Le Maravigle dell' Arte, &c.)—R. N. W.
GIOTTINO, the name by which Tommaso di Stefano is commonly known. He was a good early Florentine tempera painter, and imitator of Giotto, whence his name of Giottino, according to some accounts, while others state that his baptismal name was Giotto, not Tommaso. He was born in 1324, and learnt the art of Giotto from his father Stefano, one of Giotto's school. Giottino was employed in the church of San Francesco at Assisi, where some of his works still remain. Vasari praises him for many excellences—for the grace of his figures, the correctness of his forms, the beauty of his heads, and for the harmony of his colouring. There are some examples of his work in the Uffizj gallery at Florence, and in the Bardi chapel in the church of Santa Croce, representing the life of San Silvestro. Giottino was still living in 1368.—(Vasari, Vite del Pittori, &c.)—R. N. W.
GIOTTO, known also as Magister Joctus, was born in 1276, in the commune of Vespignano in the valley of Mugello, fifteen miles north-east of Florence; he is called also Giotto di Bondone, from the name of his father. The life of Giotto is somewhat of a romance. When a boy his occupation was to tend his father's sheep; and about the year 1286 the celebrated painter Cimabue having occasion to visit that part of the valley, surprised the young shepherd while endeavouring to sketch one of his father's flock on a stone. The painter being very much astonished at the ability displayed by the boy, adopted him, with the father's consent, and took Giotto back with him to Florence, and made a painter of him. Cimabue had himself been a great reformer in the art of painting, forsaking mere mediæval tradition for the study of nature; and he not only attempted life-size figures, but frequently executed works in which the figures were colossal. What, however, Cimabue only attempted, Giotto to a very great extent accomplished; there are heads, and occasionally characters, as fine in the works of Giotto as in anything that was done in after time. Among his earliest works were some wall pictures for the abbey of Florence, now perished. Buon fresco—that is, painting on the fresh wet plaster—was not invented till after Giotto's time; the earlier method was to wet the dry wall and then paint—it was afterwards called dry fresco, or fresco secco, to distinguish it from the better and later method now commonly known as fresco. Some of these early works are preserved in the Florentine academy, and in the churches of Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella. There is also an excellent piece of two apostles in the National Gallery, saved from the church of the Carmine destroyed by fire in 1771. Giotto, like most of his contemporaries, was also a worker in mosaic; in 1298 he was at Rome, and executed there the mosaic of the "Disciples in the Storm," known as the Navicella of Giotto. He executed later some extensive works in the church of San Francesco at Assisi; and in 1306 he was employed on the interesting series of the life of the Virgin in the church of the Madonna dell' Arena at Padua, lately published by the Arundel Society. When engaged on this work be used to be visited by the poet Dante, who has noticed the painter in the Purgatorio, canto xi. From Padua Giotto went to Avignon, and he took with him a present of a bronze crucifix to Pope Clement V. from Andrea Pisano, which led to that sculptor's commission from Clement for the first set of bronze gates for the baptistery of Florence; and Giotto designed the famous campanile or bell-tower by the s ide of it, but he did not live to carry it out. It was actually constructed by Taddeo Gaddi some years after the death of Giotto and of Dante, so that neither of them ever saw "Giotto's tower," notwithstanding the Florentine ciceroni point out the stone on which Dante used to sit of an evening admiring the beautiful work of his friend. Giotto returned to Florence from Avignon in 1316, and from this time he appears to have devoted his attention as much to architecture and sculpture as to painting. In 1322 he visited Lucca, and in 1327 painted a chapel for King Robert in the Castel Nuovo at Naples, which has been long since destroyed. He executed some works also at Ravenna, Milan, and Lucca, but nearly all have perished. In 1840 an interesting recovery was made of some portraits painted by Giotto, in the chapel of the Palazzo del Podestà, among which is one of Dante, now well known in prints. This great artist died on the 8th of January, 1336, or correctly in 1337, as the Florentines and others reckoned their years from the 25th of March, the Annunciation day, instead of the 1st of January as now. He was buried with great pomp in the cathedral of Florence, Santa Maria del Fiore. Giotto educated a great school, and was one of the greatest reformers or promoters of the art of painting; his chief scholar was Taddeo Gaddi, who lived with him for twenty-four years, and completed his unfinished works. The famous Last Supper of the refectory of the church of Santa Croce at Florence, formerly attributed to Giotto, is now given without hesitation to his scholar Taddeo. Though of so great ability in some departments of painting, Giotto is very hard in his drawing, and he paid little or no attention to the harmony of light and shade or general perspective, though skilful in foreshortening the figure; and his colouring is feeble. In composition and expression he was even great, and in this respect his works constitute the era of a new epoch of art. There is a saying—"Rounder than the O of Giotto." This, according to Vasari, has reference to a mechanical feat performed by the painter before he went to Rome. Pope Boniface, who wished to decorate St. Peter's, sent an envoy to Florence and Siena for artists, of whose ability he required specimens. Giotto is said to have sent a circle, drawn without the aid of compasses, with a brush, in red colour. And this mere mechanical exploit (in which perhaps many coopers might rival him in chalk) appeared, it is said, in the eyes of the pope to be more wonderful in skill than any of the specimens forwarded by the other artists applied to—though the painter's general reputation may have had something to do with the decision.—(Vasari, ed. Lemonnier.)—R. N. W.
GIOVANETTI, Giacomo, an Italian jurisconsult, was born at Orta in 1787, and died at Novara in 1849. Recognized as the most eminent lawyer in Piedmont, he added to his laurels by earnest arguments in favour of free trade. His knowledge of the laws relating to irrigation caused him to be consulted on the subject by the authorities both of France and Portugal. In 1848 he became president of the council of state.—W. J. P.
GIOVANNINI, Giacomo Maria, Italian engraver, was born at Bologna in 1667. He studied painting under Antonio Roll, but abandoned that art for engraving, in which he attained marked success. Besides separate plates after Correggio, the Caracci, &c., he executed a series of twelve prints from Correggio's paintings in the cupola of S. Giovanni at Parma, and ten from the paintings by L. Caracci and his scholars in the cloister of S. Michele-in-Bosco, Bologna. But his greatest undertaking was that of drawing and engraving the duke of Parma's fine collection of two thousand medals. The plates were published with descriptions by Pedrusi in seven volumes. Giovannini died at Parma in 1717.—J. T—e.
* GIOVINI, Angelo Aurelio Bianchi, was born at
