Who Arted: Weekly Art History for All Ages

Giotto di Bondone, born around 1267 near Florence, is widely recognized as a pivotal figure who transformed the trajectory of Western art by breaking away from the flat, spiritual symbolism of the Byzantine style. Legend, as recorded by the 16th-century biographer Giorgio Vasari, holds that the master painter Cimabue discovered Giotto as a young shepherd boy sketching lifelike sheep on a rock. During his apprenticeship in the bustling trade center of Florence, Giotto pioneered the use of chiaroscuro—the application of light and shadow to create three-dimensional volume—and introduced anatomical realism that made religious figures appear as if they had actual bones and muscle beneath their garments. His mastery of the fresco technique, which involved painting into wet plaster to bond the pigment directly to the wall, ensured that his storytelling and emotional depth would endure for centuries in major Italian cities like Assisi, Rome, and Milan.

Giotto’s influence is perhaps most evident in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, completed around 1305, where he depicted raw human grief in scenes like The Lamentation. His later work, the Ognissanti Madonna, further showcases his ability to blend traditional medieval conventions with observable reality. While the infant Jesus is rendered as a "homunculus" or "little man" to symbolize divine wisdom, the Virgin Mary is depicted with a sense of physical weight and presence previously unseen in altarpieces. Beyond his artistic innovations, Giotto was a savvy businessman and a public figure, eventually serving as the chief architect for the city of Florence. Before his death in 1337, he designed the iconic bell tower for the Florence Cathedral, leaving a legacy as the "Father of the Renaissance" who bridged the gap between sacred symbolism and the human experience.

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Today, we’re going to look back at the winner of this year’s Arts Madness Tournament. I want to say a big thank you to everyone who has been listening and participating in the Tournament. This year was the biggest one yet. We started with 64 diverse artists and artworks. After six weeks of head to head matches and 13,757 votes Frank Lloyd Wright has come out on top. 

Wright was been a formidable artist in every round of the tournament. He has gotten over 70% of the vote in every matchup and this final round was no different. Frank Lloyd Wright triumphed over Romero Britto in a landslide with 78% of the vote. Thanks again for everyone who listened and took time to vote over the last 6 weeks. 

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The Codex Borgia is a pre-Columbian Mesoamerican manuscript, a 36-foot folded document made of animal hide, dating from the 13th to early 16th centuries. Created by Indigenous peoples, likely in central Mexico, it serves as a religious and divinatory almanac used by priests. Filled with intricate depictions of deities like Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl, and Tlaloc, it illustrates the 260-day tonalpohualli ritual calendar. Part of the “Borgia Group,” it survived the Spanish conquest and is now housed in the Vatican Apostolic Library. The codex offers invaluable insight into pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican beliefs, cosmology, and rituals, showcasing complex iconography and artistic skill. It provides crucial information for understanding the history, culture, and religion of ancient Mexican civilizations.

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This week, I got to talk to Kory Stamper, author of True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color, exploring how color is a complex intersection of physics, physiology, and psychology. Human color perception is defined not just by wavelengths of light, but by the brain’s interpretive processes using specialized cells in the retina known as rods and cones. While rods detect light and dark, three types of cones are responsible for firing in response to specific wavelengths, which the brain then blends into the visible spectrum. Linguistics plays a vital role in this experience; studies of cultures like the Himba tribe in Namibia suggest that the specific terms available in a language can influence how quickly an individual differentiates between hues like blue and green. Research on infants even suggests that color recognition may trigger the brain’s language centers before the visual cortex, indicating that the human experience of the spectrum is deeply tied to the need for categorization.

Find more information about Kory Stamper and her book, True Color at

https://korystamper.com/true-color/

Buy the book on Amazon or wherever you get your books.

Be sure to vote for your favorite work in our final round of Arts Madness

https://www.whoartedpodcast.com/arts-madness

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Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1653) was a preeminent Italian Baroque painter and one of the most accomplished artists of the 17th century. Born in Rome as the daughter of the esteemed painter Orazio Gentileschi, she developed her craft in an era where women were largely excluded from formal art academies and professional guilds. Despite enduring a traumatic assault by a tutor and a grueling, high-profile trial in 1612, Gentileschi forged a highly successful career that spanned Rome, Florence, Venice, and Naples. She broke significant historical barriers in 1616 by becoming the first woman admitted to the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence, an achievement that granted her the legal right to sign her own contracts and manage her own professional affairs.

Gentileschi is celebrated for her mastery of tenebrism—a style characterized by intense contrasts of light and shadow—and her unparalleled ability to render human emotion with raw, visceral intensity. Her most famous work, Judith Slaying Holofernes, exemplifies her unique perspective, portraying the biblical heroine with a focus on physical strength, focused determination, and female solidarity. This depiction stands in stark contrast to versions by male contemporaries, who often portrayed the character as delicate or hesitant. Often interpreted through the lens of her personal resilience and agency, Gentileschi’s paintings frequently feature powerful, complex women. Today, she is recognized not only as a feminist icon but as a defining figure of the Baroque period whose technical skill and narrative depth rivaled the greatest masters of her time.

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