The Ressurection of Lazarus
Giotto de Bondones
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Giotto de Bondones was obsessed with individuality and the pathos of an individual. These ideas gave his painting a subtlety that's still touching and somehow both familiar and alien. 

One of Giotto's many paintings is called The Resurrection of Lazarus. The painting is a great example of how he pulls the viewer into dimensional and emotional perspective. In the painting there is an arrangement of masses, each fitted together nicely. The eye is immediately drawn to the striking figure of the risen man, swathed, cadaverous, but unmistakably alive within his shroud. Yet the flow of lines does not rest there, but carries on, over long diagonals and undulating waves, left to the figure of Christ and around the elliptical group.

The men kneeling at the feet of the others are a perfect example of how Giotto brings the viewer into emotional perspective. When a viewer looks at them, he or she wonders what is going on inside the kneeler's heads. The faces of the people are very distinguished and a lower lip is pouched out, a hesitant hand is lifted, or a forehead is wrinkled. His detailing of these features really captivates strong emotion within his painting.

 

 
         
           
    Blue as a background recedes quietly and suggests in an abstract way the infinite depth of the sky. It also serves to render the design of nearby masses more compact, walling them in from the rear. Gold haloes symbolize relief and other work within the century. The groups of figures huddled tightly together (e.g., above the man with hand to chin) with practically no spatial intervals between them. Their voluminous draperies, coming almost to the ground, make them rather block-like, heavy; rarely do they stand on their own feet even as lightly as the two boys lifting the slab in this picture.      
           

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