the jawlines of Giotto's figures are created. The new approach to the representation of volume, along with a new sense of space and psychology, signals a turning point in Western painting--from the filling-in and accenting of outlines to the primacy of the painter's control of his medium.
3. From 1300 to the 1340s painting had flourished in the prosperous cities of Florence and Siena. Political stability and rapid economic expansion provided a civic atmosphere conducive to important commissions and a private audience for devotional art. But in the 1340s the boom economy collapsed. Bankers and trading companies suffered serious reverses--with many being forced out of business--and government was undermined by internal power struggles. Crops also failed at the same time and there was no part of the population that was immune to these disasters. In 1348 the bubonic plague, or Black Death, swept through Europe and destroyed up to half the population of most cities.
Even without the plague it is likely that the
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