The Middle Ages were coming to an end. Its art presented holy beings in a golden, heavenly realm. The Renaissance then burst onto the scene, and it was time for great art to appear on earth, followed by exciting discoveries in science.
Renaissance artists depicted spiritual figures, but they placed them in natural settings and earthly places. One artist led the way: Giotto di Bondone (1267–1337) created paintings that, like highway signs telling what’s ahead, connected with common people and encouraged them to believe in God and respect nature. He painted scenes of miraculous events that showed the power of faith and how belief can accomplish the seemingly impossible.
Natural settings had rarely been expressed in Western paintings before. But they are shown prominently in Giotto’s paintings of St. Francis, the poor man from Assisi, who had passed away only 20 years before Giotto was born.
Accurate Observations
Giotto depicted the natural environment so accurately in his frescoes that they provide a clue to events in the past. The rocks that he painted were part of his local landscape: limestone, which is common in the region of Umbria.
Giotto portrays Francis on a block of limestone which has been weathered and uplifted, as seen by its nearly vertical relief. A cleft in the side of the cliff, common to calcareous deposits, has opened. Giotto uses this rock, which has been sliced open, to imitate the wounds in St. Francis’s hands and feet. The church in the foreground is made of the gray limestone found in the area and commonly used for construction. To the left of the church, grikes (solution fissures) and clints (limestone separated from adjacent sections by solution fissures) are starting to form.
The Scaglia Rossa limestone depicted in the fresco was mined at the Mount Subasio quarry. Pizzarusso writes that Giotto’s accurate depictions of local rock formations allow geologists to identify the rock type down to the exact place it can be found, compare past and present differences of strata and geological features, and then better pinpoint the rate of geological change in the region. This same rock type later gave clues to scientists who offered one well-accepted theory for the extinction of the dinosaurs.Speaking With Birds
Most of us don’t understand the language of birds. Their loud and complex buzzes, chirps, and trills mystify. It’s a mystery to most of us how to interact with our winged friends.Yet Francis of Assisi spoke to them. Giotto’s fresco “Sermon to the Birds,” tells the story of Francis speaking to these winged creatures about God and other spiritual truths. The scene depicts Francis and another friar coming toward a small flock on the ground as more fly down. The birds listen expectantly as the saint tells them about God. Francis blesses them and the birds fly off.
Giotto explained what’s going on in this miraculous event pictorially, through the reaction of the other figure in the painting. A friar raises his hand with a surprised expression on his face: How could this happen?
People recognized Francis in his day for his humble demeanor and kind preaching; perhaps the birds also recognized the poor man of Assisi, because they listened to him. Learn Bird Watching states: “Birds have long been known to be able to recognize individual humans. Studies have shown that they can distinguish between different people’s faces.”
Water From a Rock
Another of Giotto’s frescoes, “The Miracle of the Spring” shows how water answers Francis’s prayer. Out of compassion, Francis brings forth a spring from a rock to give water to a man dying of thirst.As the story goes, Francis, who was with two monks, was approached by a farmer who was suffering from thirst and had collapsed. Giotto’s painting shows that Francis pities the poor farmer and prays fervently. Then, water comes gushing out of the rock near the farmer. The farmer leans down to the rock and drinks from the miraculous spring, and he is saved. After this kindness, it is said that the spring disappeared as if it had never existed.
Again, to help the viewer understand what a miraculous event this was, Giotto showed Francis’s two companions reacting to the miracle. With their expressions of amazement, they demonstrate how most people would react if they had witnessed this event.
Scientists have come to understand that everything at the most microscopic level is made mostly of water—even rocks, as strange as it may seem. Recent research has discovered that water can reside in and among the smallest particles of rock. Pizzarusso notes Giotto’s accuracy in painting the scene with wave-like patterns formed by the erosion of stratified limestone. She writes: “Limestone is porous, and often springs will gush forth from the interior of the Earth.”
Giotto’s Billboards
Giotto’s frescoes were the billboards of his day, telling all who passed by that believing in the divine could reveal the secrets of creation. His frescoes show that Francis first believed something could happen, and then it happened. Water springs from rock, and birds listen to a human talking to them. He did not have to see to believe; he believed and then witnessed miraculous events.Giotto’s frescoes foretold scientific breakthroughs that would only be researched by scientists hundreds of years later. If we can clear our thinking, we will see and experience how the divine realm reveals heavenly secrets to science.
