Whose Art Started the Renaissance?

Florentine painter Giotto di Bondone (c. 1267-1337) is widely regarded as the father of Renaissance painting. Breaking from the flat, stylised Byzantine tradition, Giotto introduced three-dimensionality, naturalistic human expressions, and convincing spatial depth. His frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel (Arena Chapel) in Padua, completed around 1305, are masterpieces of narrative storytelling and emotional realism. Giorgio Vasari, writing in the 16th century, credited Giotto with beginning the transformation of art "from Greek [Byzantine] to Latin [Renaissance]." Later masters — Masaccio, Botticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo — built on the foundation Giotto laid.