Giotto di Bondone

Giotto di Bondone was born near Florence, probably into a farming family. A well-known story, told later by Giorgio Vasari, says the painter Cimabue found him as a shepherd boy drawing a sheep on a rock and took him as a pupil. Whatever the truth, Giotto became the most admired painter of his time. Before him, Italian painting followed the flat, formal Byzantine style. Giotto painted figures that seem to have weight and stand in real space, with faces that show grief, tenderness and surprise. His greatest surviving work is the series of frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, finished around 1305, telling the lives of the Virgin Mary and Christ. Frescoes of the life of Saint Francis in the Upper Church at Assisi are often credited to him, though scholars debate this. He also worked in Rome, Naples and Florence, where he painted chapels in the church of Santa Croce. In 1334 Florence made him chief architect of its cathedral, and he designed the bell tower, still called Giotto's Campanile. The poet Dante mentioned his fame. He died in Florence in 1337.

Faith: Faith not well documented; most of his works were made for churches. Source: Wikipedia