The last great Gothic painter, 
and maybe the first of
the modern painters, is Giotto. He preceded
the Renaissance by about a hundred years,
and if you want to see
Giotto's work you can see a
lot of it in the great
cultural centers of Italy.
Perhaps the best collection of Giotto is
in Padua, where you can find the Scrovegni
Chapel. And you step into this Chapel,
and the entire thing is frescoed
by Giotto and his aides and students.
And we find here a cohesive
story that just tells an entire — the life
of Mary, or the life of Jesus, or whatever,
and when you look at
this, you see powerful
visual images that were really
effective teachers 600 years ago.
Also when we look at this we are looking at
frescoes. You hear the word "fresco" a lot.
It's not technically a painting, fresco
is mixing the pigments into the wet
plaster. It was very permanent and you
had to be very fast, because when it was
dry, it was dry. But it survives a
lot better than canvas, alright.
So fresco artists, and a lot of this
art is fresco, they would draw a
cartoon on the wall, and then they would
mix the color into the plaster and they
would apply it to the wall, they'd rough
up the walls so the plaster would stick to
it, and when the plaster
dried, the color was the wall,
I mean it was so strong. And you'll see
frescoes all over in your travels.
