ABSTRACT
The Medici family encouraged the practitioners who came to their court to such effect that the Florentine school dominated the development of the arts in Italy and, as a result, throughout Europe. The fore-runners of the Renaissance fall outside the ambit of a book on the main Medici period, significant though their personal influence was. Giotto remains an enormously significant figure in the history of Western European art. Earlier painting shows scarcely a trace of observation from nature. Lorenzo Ghiberti was more of a craftsman than an inspired artist, but a craftsman of meticulous skill that his reputation survives — based principally, for the layman, on a single work, the two doors which he designed for the Baptistery of San Giovanni. Giorgio Vasari refers to considerable activity by Masaccio as a portrait painter ‘from the life’, but unfortunately only his portrait of Giovanni de’ Bicci survives.
