Death Anniversary: Giotto — January 8, 1337

Giotto died in Florence on 8 January 1337, while the campanile that bears his name was rising beside the cathedral — only its lower level was complete. Three decades earlier he had painted the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, the fresco cycle that pulled European painting out of the Byzantine and toward the real. Older Florentine records give the year as 1336: the city then began its year in March, and both dates name the same January morning.