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Dr. Steven Zucker: Giotto is not a Renaissance painter

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but his laying that foundation

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--20 perhaps 30 years after Cimabue painted

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the large altar piece for Santa Trinita

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Giotto--his student--paints the Madonna and child enthroned as well

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that we think came from the Church of Ognissanti in Florence

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Dr. Beth Harris: And this is a Mary like none we have seen before

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she occupies space--she has a monumentality

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and presence--and physicality

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Dr. Zucker: It's totally different from anything

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that we saw at the end of the 1200s

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--if you think about Cimabue or even if you think about Duccio in Siena

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--there's kind of delicacy--a kind of elegance

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that those are figures that are almost paper thin

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--and here Giotto's Madonna is solid--she weighs a lot

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--there's no knocking her over

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Dr. Harris: No--and it's not just the size of her body

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it's also that use of modeling that we see

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Dr. Zucker: Light and shadow

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--the turn of a body that created by the transition

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from highlights to shade

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Dr. Harris: Exactly--which we can see in her neck

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--around her breasts--pulling the drapery

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across toward the Christ child

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Dr. Zucker: We see that in the Christ child as well

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and even in the angels around her

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this is so different from that real sense of flatness

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or the sense of drawing

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this seems much more sculptural

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Dr. Harris: With Giotta--we have a really sense of Mary

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sitting inside her throne

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--her knees are clearly foreshortened

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--if you look back at the Duccio

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--she turns her body so that he thighs

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are parallel to the picture plane

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--but the knees in Giotto's Madonna

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come forward toward us creating an illusion of space

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Dr. Zucker: Ya--it's true and then of course

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there's a little bit more of a rational space

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for her to exist in

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--this is not a painting that uses linear perspective

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but it is a painting that functions as a precursor in some ways

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--I mean look for example at the specificness

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with which the artist places us--the viewer

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in relationship to the architecture that he is portraying

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--now if you look at it carefully

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clearly we are looking down from the step in the foreground

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--but we are looking up at the ceiling of the throne

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--and there's a left-right axis as well

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--we can see a little bit more of the window

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on the right side--so we know that we're actually favored

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on the left a little bit--and so it makes sense

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that we are just below Christ

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and we are just to his left

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-so Giotto is placing us in a very particular

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point in relation to these divine figures

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--and it is making room for us

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Dr. Harris: As individuals--as viewers

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Dr. Zucker: Giving us a kind of dignity in relationship to the divine

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--and that is an inherently Renaissance idea

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--and what I think is really remarkable

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is that the Old Testament prophets that we saw in the Cimabue

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are now brought out of the basement

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and they flank the Virgin Mary

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--and we can actually see their faces--at least two of them

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framed in the wings of the throne itself

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--so it's as if Giotto was actually suggesting to us

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that a painting can be a kind of window

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that we can look into--that we can look through

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--and that a painting is a kind of frame

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in which we can enter with our eyes

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Dr. Harris: That's the reason that Giotto's painting

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has a kind of emotional power

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--even within this very traditional composition

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all of that use of gold--all of these things

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that are still Medieval

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Giotto is--literally--making room

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Dr. Zucker: In a sense--making a space for us in this room

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because this a world that we can inhabit

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this is place that we know where there are solids

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--where there is gravity

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--where there is in a sense all

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the physical forces that our bodies contend with

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--and we're able to inhabit this space

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in a much more direct way

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than in the previous paintings

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Dr. Harris: So she's in heaven but she's still here with us

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Dr. Zucker: That basic conflict will power

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the Renaissance for the next several hundred years

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--how to we bring together our physical experience

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and our understanding--our emotional attachment

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to the divine

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