August 26, 2018 Sunday
Bedtime Story
How Giotto Outshone Cimabue
Gothic art is a medieval art that developed
in northern France.
It appears quite late as compared to
Byzantine art in 12th century AD out of the Romanesque art and it
spread all over the Catholic Europe right from Sicily in the south to
Scandinavia in the North.
It obviously did not make much headway to
the East.
By nature Cimabue the master was haughty
and arrogant (being one of the best or perhaps the best painter in those parts),
extremely disinclined to take any sort of criticism regarding his work and if
so happened that any artist found flaw in his work, he would immediately
destroy that work, no matter how precious it might have been to be.
It is said by his contemporaries that he
was a perfectionist who was extremely critical of his own work (and perhaps
that is why he was unable to tolerate anyone else’s criticisms).
How ironical and perhaps even befitting it
is that this great artist of extreme pride and haughtiness was completely
eclipsed by the talent of his own protégé and assistant.
In his second book of his Divine Comedy
after Inferno, Dante Alighieri in the book Purgatorio (Italian for “Purgatory”)
describes this tragedy of the great master being overshadowed by his own pupil.
“O vanity of human powers,
How briefly lasts the crowning green of
glory,
Unless an age of Darkness follows!
In painting Cimabue thought he held the
field
But now it’s Giotto has the cry,
So that the other’s fame is dimmed.”
Oddly enough, it was not Giotto who had
approached Cimabue but the other way around after Cimabue came across some of
the pictures drawn by Giotto on the rocks.
Once Giotto came under the tutorship of
Cimabue he got more opportunities to display his genius.
On one certain occasion the master was away
from the workshop which was obviously full of the creations of Cimabue.
On one of the paintings that had a face
represented drawn by the master, the young apprentice painted a lifelike fly so
remarkable that upon returning Cimabue tried several times to brush off the
fly.
To fool his master in his own field and on
his own creation was no small feat.
Soon the news of his artistic talent spread
to Pope who sent a messenger of his to Giotto to get a taste of his skills.
Giotto had to send some kind of evidence as
a proof of his genius.
Giotto drew a circle for the Pope with his
bare hands without the use of a pair of compass and keeping his arm absolutely
stationary using merely the fine muscles of his wrists and fingers.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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