The room named after the painter who changed the course of Western art — and who was born ten minutes from here. Double room on the first floor, south-west aspect, warm afternoon light.
Book now →Giotto di Bondone was born around 1267 in Vespignano, a hamlet of Vicchio, into a family of small landowners. The main source is Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1550, second edition 1568), which recounts his meeting with Cimabue while the boy was drawing a sheep on a flat stone. The story is echoed in Lorenzo Ghiberti's Commentarii (c. 1450) and in Filippo Villani's De origine civitatis Florentiae (1395).
In Florence, in Cimabue's workshop, Giotto learned tempera painting on panel and fresco technique. Among his documented works: the St Francis cycle in the Upper Basilica of Assisi (attributed, 1295–1299), the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (1303–1305), the Crucifix of Santa Maria Novella (c. 1290–1295), the Badia Polyptych (c. 1300), and the design of the campanile of Florence Cathedral, begun in 1334. He died in Florence on 8 January 1337.
His pictorial revolution — studied in reference works such as Miklós Boskovits' Giotto e i giotteschi (Giunti, 2000) — lay in restoring volume, weight and emotion to human figures, breaking with the flat frontality of Byzantine painting. Vasari summarises it: "Giotto restored painting to that perfection and greatness which the ancients had found."
Giotto's House at Colle di Vespignano is open every day of the year, free of charge. Beside the restored farmhouse it hosts a small documentation centre run by the Vicchio Municipality. It is 12 km from the house, about 20 minutes by car along the SS551.
Among the stones of Vespignano walked a shepherd boy who drew on rocks.— Giorgio Vasari, Lives, 1550