Giotto, Ambrogiotto Bondone. Born in 1276. Italian painter and architect. Pupil of Cimabue and friend of Dante, whose portrait he painted at Ravenna. Was son of a citizen of Florence, and apprenticed to a woolstapler. Painted frescoes at Assisi, and was probably the founder of the modern school of portrait painting. About 1299 he went to Rome, where he painted and worked in mosaics, and subsequently was employed at Padua and Florence, where his frescoes in the Peruzzi Chapel of Santa Croce were discovered in 1863. He also painted the "Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes," at Naples, and designed the campanile of Florence. Giotto died in 1337, and was buried in the cathedral there.

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