Giotto

Vasari famously wrote that Giotto "recovered the true method of painting, which been lost for many years before him," and indeed he is traditionally considered a founder of the Italian Renaissance. Producing a series of commissioned works for the church and upper classes in his native Tuscany and surrounding regions, Giotto changed the course of European art by breaking away from the rigid, stereotyped figures of the Byzantine and Giotto medieval traditions. His innovation was to give his cha…