Giotto

the most sovereign master of painting in his time, who drew all his figures and their postures according to nature 14th-century chronicler Giovanni Villani

Giotto di Bondone (c. 1266–1337) was the first great Florentine painter – and recognized as such in his own time by all, including Dante, whose portrait Giotto painted in the Bargello chapel and who wrote about him in his Purgatorio XI (94–96):

Cimabue believed that he held the field
In painting, and now Giotto has the cry,
So the fame of the former is obscure.

Giotto was the first to break away from the then prevalent Byzantine style, inventing an essential and direct approach to portraying narrative fresco cycles, but is even more important for his revolutionary treatment of space and of the human figure. He would inspire all the great Florentine painters who followed, from Masaccio to Michelangelo Buonarroti.