Drawings

Giotto drawings are hard to find - in order to illustrate his abilities within this medium, it is necessary to bring together short anecdotes and opinions from a variety of sources.

There is no securely established large body of independent drawings by Giotto comparable to the surviving sheets of later Renaissance masters. His graphic practice has to be approached through several different witnesses: lines beneath paintings, incisions in prepared surfaces, disputed architectural designs, later artists' copies and stories told after his death. Each answers a different question. A line uncovered by technical examination belongs to the making of a particular painting; a drawing after that painting belongs to its subsequent life. The celebrated circle and the shepherd boy belong to Giotto's literary reputation. Keeping those distinctions in view makes the evidence more interesting, because we can see both how pictures were constructed and how their maker became a model of artistic intelligence. ^[1]

Giotto's Natural Drawing Ability - Creating his Perfect Circle

Pope Boniface VIII famously awarded Giotto a commission after the artist had applied for the work by simply painting a circle on a piece of paper. Many might not understand such a simple scrawl, but the Pope spotted the artist's ability to draw a perfect circle without any aids, and agreed to give him the work as a consequence.

This is a later biographical anecdote, rather than a documented commission from Boniface VIII. Vasari tells the circle story in his sixteenth-century Lives, more than two centuries after Giotto's death. His 1568 account actually names a Pope Benedict, with a confused papal numeral; it cannot securely identify a patron or date a painting. The familiar Boniface version should therefore be read as one form of the legend. No surviving circle sheet provides an independent check on the event. ^[2]

[Giotto] immediately took a sheet of paper, and with a pen dipped in red, fixing his arm firmly against his side to make a compass of it, with a turn of his hand he made a circle so perfect that it was a marvel to see it. Giorgio Vasari

The English wording above preserves a familiar version of the episode, but its reference to a pen needs qualification. In the Italian passages of both 1550 and 1568, Vasari specifies a pennello, a brush, dipped in red. The precise translator of this English wording is unidentified. That difference matters when imagining the action: a brush held in the hand makes a different mark from a pen, even though both versions turn the painter's body into a compass. ^[2]

Vasari gives the episode a carefully staged audience. A papal messenger collects specimens from competing artists, asks Giotto for a drawing and receives something that seems absurdly insufficient. Giotto insists that it will be understood in Rome. The informed viewers recognise what the messenger has missed: the steadiness and command contained in one continuous movement. The story makes skill visible through an apparently effortless act, then contrasts professional judgment with a spectator's disappointment. The comic reversal turns the episode into a lesson in recognising skill.

The circle also gives Vasari an explanation for a Tuscan saying about Giotto's O. He discusses a pun in which roundness can suggest dullness, although the painter's circle represents exceptional ability. This verbal ending belongs to the anecdote's construction. Reading the story as literature allows us to enjoy its wit without treating it as a surviving test of Giotto's hand. It tells us how a later writer wanted mastery to be recognised; the materials beneath actual paintings provide a different kind of access to that mastery. ^[2]

Drawing as a means to helping Assistants

Giotto was unable to keep up with the work that he took on, and employed highly skilled assistants to help him out. Giotto realised that by drawing and painting outlines of his ideas, he could better lead his assistants who would then take on the less important parts of each composition. This is termed under painting, but could also be done using drawing techniques and some of Giotto's original work can still be seen under the layers of paint which were applied over the top.

The relationship between design and collaboration is real, but this account compresses several processes. Underdrawing means drawn preparation beneath paint. Underpainting is an initial painted stage that establishes colour, light or form. An incision is a groove made in a ground or plaster surface, and can guide a contour or architectural division without being a brush or pen drawing. These operations may contribute to one picture, but their names should not be used interchangeably. Neither their existence nor Giotto's use of assistants establishes that he invented them.

It is also unsafe to divide every composition into an important part painted by Giotto and subordinate areas completed to his outlines. Technical evidence can reveal shared working practices, revisions and differences between hands. Identifying an individual painter within those practices usually requires further argument. A preparatory line under a work attributed to Giotto and his workshop does not automatically become a securely identified autograph drawing.

Cennino Cennini offers a useful account of practical transmission around 1400. In the Book of Art, he traces his training through Agnolo Gaddi and Taddeo Gaddi to Giotto, then invokes that lineage when explaining how to colour a youthful face in fresco. His account passes on a sequence of work, using green earth, flesh tones and progressively lighter modelling. This is testimony to a workshop tradition claimed by a later practitioner. It does not certify every stage in a particular surviving Giotto painting, and Cennino himself allows differences between successive masters. Knowledge could travel through teaching and repeated actions as well as through portable sheets. ^[3]

The nature of his paintings, as frescoes, meant that the artist had to move quickly. Some of his work would need to be completed within a day, as the plaster dried. He would therefore draw out his ideas and allow his assistants to work quickly, before perhaps applying the final touches himself. Without his planning phase, there would be too many variables for the assistants to meet his requirements within the available time.

For fresco, the relevant unit is the area of fresh finishing plaster that could be painted while its surface remained suitable. A scene might require several such areas; a whole narrative painting did not necessarily have to be completed in one day. Painting on dry plaster, or a secco, introduces other materials and a different working interval. A single formula of advance outline, assistants' filling-in and final intervention cannot describe all Giotto-associated wall painting.

The Bardi Chapel at Santa Croce offers a particularly useful recent example. The conservation completed in 2026 identified technical and stylistic differences within the workshop, extensive use of a secco over a fresco base, and the architectural system joining the narrative scenes. Comprehensive digital mapping of the incisions and construction lines now helps researchers follow how that architecture was laid out on the walls. These marks are physical witnesses to spatial planning, still attached to the place for which they were made. They are not independent drawings transferred into a museum collection. ^[4]

Padua requires its own evidence. The Scrovegni Chapel's institutional conservation account records the major campaign of 2001–02 and subsequent monitoring and maintenance. Its painted surfaces have a history of treatment as well as a medieval history of manufacture. A pale contour in a photograph could be a preparatory mark, exposed underpaint, abrasion or later intervention; its identity cannot be decided by appearance alone. Conservation documentation is what allows a proposed reading of such a detail to become an object-specific claim. ^[5]

During the time of Giotto drawing would often be completed with pen and ink, with charcoal and chalk also used as an alternative. Much would depend on the purpose of each sketch, and whether it was intended to be a study or preparation for a later painting, or a standalone artwork capturing something from the natural world.

These are possible categories of drawing materials and purposes, rather than an inventory of surviving Giotto sketches. Paper and parchment are different supports; neither should be confused with the ground of a panel or the plaster of a wall. There is no documented Giotto sketchbook here from which we can reconstruct an everyday preference for chalk, charcoal or pen. Even the question of whether a drawing was made to develop a design, explain it to another person or present it to a patron needs to be answered for the particular object.

A panel can preserve several kinds of graphic action in close proximity. The National Gallery of Art's Washington Madonna and Child, the rose-bearing picture also known as the Goldman Madonna, has incised figure outlines and freehand incised patterns in its gilding. Its technical summary describes green underpainting and verdaccio modelling in the flesh, followed by thin layers of paint. Infrared examination reveals an adjustment of the Child's face: changes to the eyes and ear tilted it slightly upwards. This is a small but consequential decision within the making of the image. The head's relationship to the Virgin could be refined before the final surface was completed. ^[6]

The infrared record does not recover a separate sheet, and the incision around a figure is not identical to the painted modelling within it. One establishes a boundary; the other builds a face through layers and strokes. Together they make the panel a record of several stages of work. A reproduction of the infrared image should therefore identify both the painting and the examination method, rather than be captioned simply as a drawing by Giotto.

London's Pentecost, catalogued as Giotto and Workshop, provides a productive comparison. Dillian Gordon describes broad, vigorous underdrawing in a liquid medium, visible under magnification but only faintly in infrared reflectography. She suggests a non-carbon material such as iron-gall ink. Some architectural lines were incised, while others were not. The panel's flesh painting lacks the green underpaint recorded in the Washington Madonna. These differences resist any attempt to turn a single technical example into a universal Giotto recipe. ^[7]

A further adjustment in the London panel concerns the rays descending towards the Apostles. Incised guidance and surviving traces of gilded tin indicate that one ray was moved from a course that crossed another figure's face. Design continued as the image was being made. A ruled or scratched line was a practical aid that could be reconsidered, rather than an instruction that later layers had to obey. Gordon's observations also show why infrared alone cannot supply a complete graphic history: different materials respond differently, and microscopy, raking light and other examinations answer complementary questions. ^[7]

The possibility of reusable designs brings another question into view. A 2019 scientific study by Marco Gargano and colleagues examined God the Father with Angels, the detached gable of the Baroncelli Polyptych, now in San Diego. Infrared examination revealed detailed underdrawing with thin and broad brushstrokes. Comparisons of facial outlines and proportions led the researchers to propose that guides or models helped construct the faces. This remains a hypothesis drawn from the painted object and its technical images, rather than the discovery of those models or sketches. It suggests a possible means of repeating and transmitting a design within workshop practice, while leaving the identification of individual hands unresolved. ^[8]

God the Father with Angels, the detached Baroncelli pinnacle in San Diego, accession 1945.26. This is a normal colour reproduction, not an infrared image of its underdrawing. Image source. Public domain. Proportionally reduced reproduction; no colour or content enhancement.

Talented Draughtsman

Giotto was found sitting outdoors, sketching items from real life in a manner which had fallen out of favour in previous centuries. Fellow artists were shocked by the precision and lifelike nature of his work, and realised that this natural talent could be developed into other mediums, such as architecture and painting. Indeed, for many centuries no painter was deemed worthy of respect unless they had already mastered the basic techniques of drawing, particularly in Italy.

The outdoor discovery belongs to the later story of Giotto's childhood. It does not establish an observed event, and the general claim that naturalistic drawing had disappeared for centuries needs qualification. Medieval artists continued to draw, design and observe within many different artistic traditions. Vasari's account makes Giotto the restorer of an art supposedly buried by historical disaster; that is his influential interpretation of artistic history, rather than a neutral description of everything made before Giotto. Nor does the passage establish a compulsory drawing qualification that every respected Italian painter had to pass. ^{[1] [2]}

Whilst wandering around the Italian countryside, drawing local farmyard animals and other elements of nature, Giotto was spotted by Cimabue , who would later become his master. The latter was surprised and impressed by the qualities of his sketching and immediately encouraged him to join his studio, where Giotto could learn other mediums and hone his impressive natural ability.

Lorenzo Ghiberti's fifteenth-century Commentaries already tell of Cimabue finding the young Giotto drawing a sheep on a stone slab. Ghiberti writes long after the presumed childhood encounter. Vasari later elaborates the rural setting, the boy's innate talent and the request for his father's permission. The stone and animal give the story its memorable clarity: nature seems to teach the child before a professional master recognises him. They do not supply a securely documented apprenticeship contract. ^[1]

The anecdote remains valuable as testimony to Giotto's later reputation. It explains artistic distinction through the meeting of natural ability and teaching, and converts a large historical change into a scene between two people. That explanatory power is also a reason for caution. A satisfying origin story can circulate much more easily than information about workshop training. The survival of the narrative cannot certify the identity of an otherwise disputed early painting.

This chance meeting was key to Giotto's artistic influence which would help bring about the early stages of the Renaissance, as well as helping to bring lifelike drawing back into mainstream Italian art, after it had been sidelined for several centuries.

Giotto's importance does not depend on proving that meeting or on claiming that he single-handedly returned observation to Italian art. His surviving compositions offer evidence of sustained attention to bodily weight, gesture and spatial relationships. The different question of how he learned to make them remains less completely documented. Separating achievement from the childhood legend leaves room for predecessors, collaborators and alternative accounts of artistic change.

Remaining Giotto Drawings

All the available evidence teaches us of Giotto's skills as a draughtsman yet unfortunately there are not really any artworks left due to the fragile nature of his work in this medium. For a simple sketch to last from the time of Giotto all the way to today has just proven too tough a challenge for all of the study drawings that no doubt he would have completed during his own lifetime.

The absence of a secure, extensive group of autograph sheets cannot be explained simply by fragility. Temporary working materials can be damaged or discarded, but survival also depends on use, storage, collecting and later identification. Some drawings may never have been preserved as valued objects; others may have lost their attribution. We cannot infer the existence of particular study sheets from their absence, or establish how many Giotto made. A recognisable preparatory act on a surviving panel is firmer evidence than an imagined lost portfolio.

Ghiberti supplies an intriguing historical witness. In his discussion of the Florentine campanile reliefs, he says that in his own lifetime he saw preparatory designs attributed to Giotto, which he admired. That statement deserves attention because it concerns graphic material reportedly still accessible to a later artist. It is nevertheless Ghiberti's attribution, transmitted through his text. No presently secure group of sheets can simply be matched to it, and it does not resolve the debated authorship of the reliefs themselves. ^[1]

Mary and the Child in the Washington Madonna; this is a normal photograph of the painted surface. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection,1939.1.256. Image source. Public domain. Proportionally reduced reproduction; no colour or content enhancement.

The large architectural parchment preserved at Siena brings the problem into sharper focus. Michael Viktor Schwarz describes an elevation 222 centimetres high, assembled from three parchment skins. Brown ink is laid over blind incised guidelines, with compass and ruler used in construction, and brush-applied brown, pink and red colour. This is an elaborate object with a different scale and purpose from a quickly made figure study. Schwarz interprets it as a presentation drawing intended to win support for a tower project, rather than as a set of instructions for builders. ^[9]

Its relation to Giotto remains disputed. The design has been connected with the Florentine campanile and, alternatively, with Siena's cathedral project and Lando di Pietro. Schwarz argues that it may preserve Giotto's Florentine conception through a different hand, possibly in a proposal directed towards Sienese patrons. He explicitly distinguishes the idea conveyed by the parchment from the hand that executed it. It must not be catalogued here as a secure autograph Giotto drawing. ^[9]

That distinction lets the object illuminate design without forcing a false certainty. An architectural idea could be copied, adapted or presented afresh, retaining some features while changing others. Similarities between a drawing and a building therefore need to be weighed alongside differences, transmission and authorship. The parchment's precise lines and attractive colouring are compatible with communication to a patron; they do not by themselves prove who invented every feature or who drew each stroke.

Schwarz compares the lower design with the Florentine tower's base and discusses a very different upper structure, culminating in an octagonal termination and spire. His reconstruction is an argument about an unrealised project, not a surviving record of the tower exactly as Giotto intended it to be built. The present campanile continued under Andrea Pisano and Francesco Talenti. Neither the completed monument nor the Siena parchment gives an uncomplicated substitute for Giotto's missing personal design archive. ^[9]

Influence on Renaissance Drawing

Having renewed interest in lifelike drawing, it could be said that without the influence of Giotto, as discovered by Cimabue, we might never have seen the drawing qualities of the likes of Michelangelo and Leonardo . Drawing had already become fashionable once more, and they became motivated to explore techniques that might raise the bar once more.

The claim that Michelangelo's and Leonardo's drawing might not have existed without the childhood discovery is an untestable counterfactual. Giotto's influence is better demonstrated through particular acts of study. The Louvre preserves Michelangelo's Study of Two Figures after Giotto, inventory INV 706 recto, generally dated 1490–92. The figures derive from the Ascension of Saint John the Evangelist in the Peruzzi Chapel at Santa Croce. The museum records pen and brown inks over preparatory stylus work. It is a drawing by Michelangelo after Giotto's painting, not a drawing by Giotto. ^[10]

The sheet isolates a standing figure and another bending forward, with the change in posture made legible through the fall of their robes. Close diagonal hatching gathers in the folds, while more open passages leave the paper carrying the light. In the bent body, the drapery's broad arc makes the inclination palpable even before the viewer studies the head and hands. The standing figure supplies a different rhythm of long vertical folds. Seen together, the bodies offer a concentrated study of how cloth can describe an action.

Removing these figures from their painted surroundings changes the viewer's attention. The architecture and complete narrative no longer organise the encounter; posture, outline and the handling of folds become the main subjects. Copying can work as analysis, allowing an artist to select and transform something useful from an older composition. It need not involve preserving every detail or imitating the older painter's material technique. Here the change from painted wall to ink on paper is itself part of the creative encounter.

This distinction also matters when searching for drawings online. An image labelled with Giotto's name may depict his work, copy a figure from it or portray the artist himself. Its title can describe a source or subject without naming its maker. The Louvre sheet belongs in a history of drawing after Giotto, where its exact author and painted source make its significance clear. It cannot be used to enlarge Giotto's autograph corpus.

Giotto was also interested in elements from normal life, and whilst most of his paintings were based on religious themes, as requested by his donors, he perhaps reminded later artists of the qualities to be found in every day life, and how they could also inspire some breathtaking art.

The language of ordinary life can be helpful when describing gesture, dress or bodily interaction in Giotto's paintings, but it should not obscure their religious purposes. An artist studying a figure from a sacred narrative might be interested in its movement, expressive force or drapery without detaching it completely from that setting. Giotto's later importance lies partly in this capacity for renewed attention: a finished painting could continue to generate questions and new drawings centuries after the working stages that produced it had become inaccessible.

Portrait of Giotto Drawing

The photograph included on this page is from a large Christies sale entitled Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite and British Impressionist Art. It is a portrait drawing of Giotto by Simeon Solomon in the late 19th century as a sign of respect and love for an artist who achieved so much many centuries earlier.

The exact auction record identifies Simeon Solomon's Giotto di Bondone as black chalk and grey wash on paper, measuring 40 × 53.7 centimetres. Christie's places it stylistically in the 1890s; that is an estimated dating, rather than a date inscribed on the sheet. The catalogued inscriptions naming Giotto and the cities Florence, Verona and Ravenna correspond to those visible in the reproduced image. This is a nineteenth-century imaginative portrait, not a lifetime likeness or a work by Giotto. Its presence does not establish Solomon's precise private motives. ^[11]

The bowed head, closed eye and leafy crown give the image a meditative character. The face is modelled with soft grey tones, while the surrounding cloth is broken into more insistent strokes and dark passages. Along the bottom, the city names run across a low band, and the identifying cartouche sits to the right. Those words anchor an otherwise inward-looking figure to a named historical artist. The image represents a later artist's encounter with Giotto's reputation, just as Michelangelo's copy records an encounter with one of his paintings.

The evidence of Giotto's drawing includes a revised face beneath a panel's paint, lines that organise an architectural setting, a disputed tower design and later acts of copying and commemoration. The stories of the circle and the sheep remain part of that history when their status is clear. Each kind of witness offers something distinct: evidence of making, a proposal about transmission, or the visible shape of Giotto's enduring fame.