高中英语教学：Giotto, Medieval Artist with an Attitude.docx

Giotto,?Medieval Artist with an Attitude By?Chris Watson Cimabue,?the greatest?painter in medieval Italy, was surprised one day when he came back from his lunch break to discover that a fly had rather arrogantly perched itself under the nose of a character that he had been working on. He swatted at the fly, but it did not move. “Shoo!” he shouted, but it remained motionless. Finally, he reached out to touch the insect. To his surprise, he found only wet paint. Turning around, he saw that his apprentice, Giotto, was doing everything he could to keep from laughing. Giotto had painted the fly when Cimabue was away, and it looked so real that Cimabue had been completely fooled.?Who was this prankster, and why would he later be considered one of the greatest artists of all time? Giotto di Bondone was born into a poor farming family in the village of Vespignano, near Florence, Italy. Legend has it that one day, when Cimabue was pleasantly strolling around the countryside, he spotted a young shepherd boy. The boy was not tending his sheep as he should have been. Instead, he was drawing pictures of them, and the sheep he drew were so lifelike that Cimabue stopped to ask the boy his name. The boy replied that it was Giotto, and Cimabue immediately asked him to come to Florence so that the young shepherd could learn how to paint. After receiving permission from the boy’s father, Cimabue and Giotto traveled to the busy city of Florence, where the young student flourished under Cimabue’s instruction and soon surpassed his master in skill. The life of a medieval artist was much different than the life of an artist today. The former not only had to concern himself with things like design and technique, but he also had to learn how to make paints and carve frames. Almost all artists were men, and they began their apprenticeships at an early age. An apprentice’s job was to copy his master as exactly as he could. The unfortunate result of this imitation was a distinct lack of new id