INTRODUCTION TO THE WORKS GIOTTO: A PAINTER OF MANY HANDS In the historical introduction we have pinpointed the growth and evolution of the new merchant and entrepreneur class. Giotto probably shared the aspirations, the story ( at least in the second phase of his activity ) and the mentality of this new class. This rational and entrepreneurial mentality had shown itself, in particular, in the kind of organisation that Giotto had given to the activity of his first important work. We refer to the cycle of frescoes carried out in Assisi in the church of St. Francis. ( The same that the earthquake of 1997 seriously damaged and that is now undergoing restoration ) In the first period of his artistic life, Giotto received commissions only from religious authorities and, in particular, from the Franciscan Order, for which he worked in Assisi but, as testified in 1312 by a certain Riccobaldo of Ferrara, also in Rimini and Padua. Here may be underlined how this new entrepreneurial feeling was in tune with Franciscan religiousness. Such religiousness was, in fact, welcomed and adopted by the new emerging classes, the Bourgeois and the Working class. To be underlined even more is the fact that , thanks to the strength now reached, the Franciscan order became a centre of collection of the most diverse cultural experiences that had matured in the centres of the North, and France in particular. This occurred as the main home of the order was in Assisi and here gathered, especially on occasion of the election of the general of the order, people from all over Europe. This is why this small town in Umbria became the cradle of Italian art on its resurrection from the period of immobility. Giotto in Assisi works side to side with Roman painters and that Cimabue which the tradition and Vasari himself have handed down as Giotto’s teacher. The success he gained, certainly determined in him a sense of faith in his own qualities and, at the same time, widened his prestige. As a well-known artist, on the way to reach the absolute and undisputed leadership in Italian painting, he is now at the head of a "bottega" (studio). The "bottega" is a firm specialised in offering a service, a pictorial image, in the case in question. Looking at the dimensions of the paintings, even more evident if we refer to frescoes, one can understand that a single painter would never have been able to finish, in a decent time, the work commissioned. And so it was necessary to have collaborators to help him. The same name of the owner of the workshop became a true brand-name : "Giotto", for the occasion. Giotto, a very capable manager, certainly chose with care his collaborators, some of which had a very high pictorial capacity ( a couple of names out of many : Taddeo Gaddi and Maso di Banco. ) Leaving apart the problems arising from this collaborative method of painting, one can re-affirm that it was Giotto who represented the breaking point with tradition, his the leap in quality. We may define him as a painter of many hands but certainly with one only mind and one only will. To such will also corresponded the wish to draw the greatest profit from his workshop. Emblematic is the fact that the three panels that have Giotto’s signature are works that cause much perplexity as to the quantity of his intervention Nevertheless, his signature was a seal of guarantee, both of the quality and of the origin. In a culture that was becoming more and more laic, Giotto, in the second phase of his life, will become a sought-after interpreter of the world of merchant-financiers, of bankers and sovereigns, of that world that he felt close to. In order of time he does, in fact, work for the Scrovegni’s in Padua, for the Peruzzi’s in Florence, for Robert of Anjou in Naples, for the Bardi’s in Florence and Azzone Visconti in Milan. In Assisi, Giotto’ art rose from the common linguistic background of the Roman painters who, in the church of St. Francis, painted stories from the old and the new Testament. In Giotto one could immediately sense a different plastic sensibility and a new vision of space. The twenty-eight squares of the Legend of St. Francis, not all of them being of his hand, or rather having a good deal of collaboration, nevertheless distinguish themselves for their spirit of simplification and order that prevails in them. In its maturity, as is the case in Padua, the art of Giotto assumed a wider breath, a freer ease of narration, a more defined space, a happier inventive freshness. On every occasion, he focalised the most involving dramatic and emotional moments, tending to fix the same physicality of man and things in a synthesis of plastic order, lucid and absolute. To this he did, however, add lyrical enthusiasm for the "revelation" of the world as if this religious subject, so often dealt with in his works, incarnated in him the necessity of discovery and of research. Unfortunately, the works of Giotto carried out in the last phase of maturity, have, in a great part, been lost. Such is the case of the works done in Naples and in Milan. The same chapels of the Bardi and Peruzzi families at Santa Croce in Florence have undergone, in time, such violations as to render them object of difficult critical attention. Nevertheless, all that Giotto has left is sufficient to decree his immortality.