Giotto di Bondone
A Life from Beginning to End (Biographies of Painters, Book 6)
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Giotto di Bondone
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Narrated by:
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Jason Zenobia
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By:
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Hourly History
About this listen
Discover the remarkable life of Giotto di Bondone...
The name Giotto di Bondone may not be as well-known as Leonardo da Vinci, but it was Giotto who made da Vinci and his contemporaries of the Renaissance possible.
Giotto, born in the late 13th century, was the first painter to escape the artistic chains of the Dark Ages and revive the natural art of Ancient Greece. Instead of creating flat, expressionless figures, as was the custom of the Middle Ages, Giotto painted characters with personalities and emotions.
Since almost all art of that time was commissioned by the Church, Giotto spent his life painting magnificent frescos for churches and chapels. He became the most famous painter of his time and opened the artistic doors to the splendid Renaissance to come.
Discover a plethora of topics such as:
- Humble Beginnings
- The Assisi Frescos
- From Rome to Padua: The Arena Chapel
- At King Robert’s Court
- Giotto, the Architect
- Late Life and Death
- And much more!
So, if you want a concise and informative book on Giotto di Bondone, simply scroll up and click the "buy now" button for instant access!
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The Sistine Secrets
- Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican
- By: Benjamin Blech, Roy Doliner
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Story5 out of 5 stars 34
Five hundred years ago, Michelangelo began work on a painting that became one of the most famous pieces of art in the world - the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Every year millions of people come to see Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling, which is the largest fresco painting on earth in the holiest of Christianity's chapels; yet there is not one single Christian image in this vast, magnificent artwork.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Well-researched!
- By Natalie K. on 08-28-17
By: Benjamin Blech, and others
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Twelve Caesars
- Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern (Bollingen Series)
- By: Mary Beard
- Narrated by: Mary Beard
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 69
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Story4 out of 5 stars 53
What does the face of power look like? Who gets commemorated in art and why? And how do we react to statues of politicians we deplore? In this book - against a background of today’s “sculpture wars” - Mary Beard tells the story of how for more than two millennia portraits of the rich, powerful, and famous in the Western world have been shaped by the image of Roman emperors, especially the “Twelve Caesars”, from the ruthless Julius Caesar to the fly-torturing Domitian.
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1 out of 5 stars
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This foray into art history is a disappointment.
- By Stephen J Chiulli on 11-10-21
By: Mary Beard
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Leonardo and the Last Supper
- By: Ross King
- Narrated by: Mark Meadows
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 193
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 169
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 170
Early in 1495, Leonardo da Vinci began work in Milan on what would become one of history's most influential and beloved works of art - The Last Supper. After a dozen years at the court of Lodovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, Leonardo was at a low point personally and professionally: at 43, in an era when he had almost reached the average life expectancy, he had failed, despite a number of prestigious commissions, to complete anything that truly fulfilled his astonishing promise.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Informative yet creative
- By Isabellabasil on 05-27-15
By: Ross King
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Michelangelo, God's Architect
- The Story of His Final Years and Greatest Masterpiece
- By: William E. Wallace
- Narrated by: Simon Callow
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 73
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 63
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 62
Michelangelo, God's Architect is the first book to tell the full story of Michelangelo's final two decades, when the peerless artist refashioned himself into the master architect of St. Peter’s Basilica and other major buildings. When the Pope handed Michelangelo control of the St. Peter’s project in 1546, it was a study in architectural mismanagement, plagued by flawed design and faulty engineering.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Michelangelo, architect, urban designer, artist
- By Marco on 09-16-20
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Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea
- Why the Greeks Matter
- By: Thomas Cahill
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 338
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 155
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Story4 out of 5 stars 155
Best selling history writer Thomas Cahill continues his series on the roots of Western civilization with this volume about the contributions of ancient Greece to the development of contemporary culture. Tracing the origin of Greek culture in the migrations of armed Indo-European horsemen into Attica and the Peloponnesian peninsula, he follows their progress into the creation of the Greek city-states, the refinement of their machinery of war, and the flowering of intellectual and artistic culture.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Super super
- By Richard on 12-28-03
By: Thomas Cahill
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How Do We Look
- The Body, the Divine, and the Question of Civilization
- By: Mary Beard
- Narrated by: Mary Beard
- Length: 2 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34
From prehistoric Mexico to modern Istanbul, Mary Beard looks beyond the familiar canon of Western imagery to explore the history of art, religion, and humanity. Conceived as an accompaniment to How Do We Look and The Eye of Faith, the famed Civilizations shows on PBS, renowned classicist Mary Beard has created this elegant volume on how we have looked at art.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Really needs a PDF
- By Britt Elin Gihleengen on 12-06-18
By: Mary Beard
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The Ugly Renaissance
- Sex, Greed, Violence and Depravity in an Age of Beauty
- By: Alexander Lee
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 15 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 120
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 100
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Story4 out of 5 stars 99
Renowned as a period of cultural rebirth and artistic innovation, the Renaissance is cloaked in a unique aura of beauty and brilliance. Its very name conjures up awe-inspiring images of an age of lofty ideals in which life imitated the fantastic artworks for which it has become famous. But behind the vast explosion of new art and culture lurked a seamy, vicious world of power politics, perversity, and corruption that has more in common with the present day than anyone dares to admit.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Author falls into the pit he digs for others
- By Sean on 01-23-16
By: Alexander Lee
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Venice
- Pure City
- By: Peter Ackroyd
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 97
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 78
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Story4 out of 5 stars 75
The Venetians' language and way of thinking set them aside from the rest of Italy. They are an island people, linked to the sea and to the tides rather than the land. This latest work from the incomparable Peter Ackroyd, like a magic gondola, transports its listeners to that sensual and surprising city. His account embraces facts and romance, conjuring up the atmosphere of the canals, bridges, and sunlit squares, the churches and the markets, the festivals and the flowers.
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2 out of 5 stars
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An endless droning list.....
- By jack on 03-15-11
By: Peter Ackroyd
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Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD
- By: Peter Brown
- Narrated by: Fleet Cooper
- Length: 31 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 263
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 226
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 221
Jesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. Through the Eye of a Needle is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A learned, well-balanced postmodern history
- By Jacobus on 11-21-12
By: Peter Brown
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The Renaissance
- A Captivating Guide to a Remarkable Period in European History, Including Stories of People Such as Galileo Galilei, Michelangelo, Copernicus, Shakespeare, and Leonardo da Vinci
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Richard L. Walton
- Length: 3 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 36
If you want to discover the captivating history of the Renaissance, then pay attention.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Monotone reader
- By Harry R. Martin on 08-07-19
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Caravaggio
- A Life Sacred and Profane
- By: Andrew Graham-Dixon
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 18 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 478
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 413
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 413
In the tradition of John Richardson's Picasso, a commanding new biography of the Italian master's tumultuous life and mysterious death. For four hundred years Caravaggio's (1571-1610) staggering artistic achievements have thrilled viewers, yet his volatile personal trajectory - the murder of Ranuccio Tomasini, the doubt surrounding Caravaggio's sexuality, the chain of events that began with his imprisonment on Malta and ended with his premature death - has long confounded historians.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Interesting life
- By Jean on 08-28-13
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The History of Western Art
- By: Peter Whitfield
- Narrated by: Sebastian Comberti
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 258
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 225
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 220
What is art? Why do we value images of saints, kings, goddesses, battles, landscapes or cities from eras of history utterly remote from ourselves? This history of art shows how painters, sculptors and architects have expressed the belief systems of their age: religious, political and aesthetic. From the ancient civilisations of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece, to the revolutionary years of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the artist has acted as a mirror to the ideals and conflicts of the human mind.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A whirlwind tour of Western art
- By Adeliese Baumann on 11-18-12
By: Peter Whitfield
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Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling
- By: Ross King
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,110
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 866
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 863
In 1508, despite strong advice to the contrary, the powerful Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo Buonarroti to paint the ceiling of the newly restored Sistine Chapel in Rome. During the four extraordinary years that Michelangelo spent laboring over the ceiling, power politics and personal rivalries swirled around him. He battled ill health, financial and family difficulties, inadequate knowledge of the art of fresco, and the Pope's impatience - a history that is more compelling than most novels.
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5 out of 5 stars
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History brought to life!
- By Anne on 05-17-03
By: Ross King
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The Louvre
- The Many Lives of the World's Most Famous Museum
- By: James Gardner
- Narrated by: Graham Halstead
- Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 32
The fascinating and little-known story of the Louvre, from its inception as a humble fortress to its transformation into the palatial residence of the kings of France and then into the world's greatest art museum.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Enlightening
- By Jean on 10-29-20
By: James Gardner
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Germany: Memories of a Nation
- By: Neil MacGregor
- Narrated by: Neil MacGregor
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 26
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 23
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 22
For the past 140 years, Germany has been the central power in continental Europe. Thirty years ago, a new German state came into being. How much do we really understand this new Germany, and how do its people now understand themselves? Neil MacGregor argues that uniquely for any European country, no coherent, over-arching narrative of Germany's history can be constructed, for in Germany, both geography and history have always been unstable.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Engaging and Informative
- By William on 06-15-24
By: Neil MacGregor
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Natasha's Dance
- A Cultural History of Russia
- By: Orlando Figes
- Narrated by: Ric Jerrom
- Length: 29 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 141
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 124
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 122
Beginning in the 18th century with the building of St. Petersburg - a 'window on the West' - and culminating with the challenges posed to Russian identity by the Soviet regime, Figes examines how writers, artists, and musicians grappled with the idea of Russia itself - its character, spiritual essence and destiny. He skillfully interweaves the great works - by Dostoevsky, Stravinsky, and Chagall - with folk embroidery, peasant songs, religious icons and all the customs of daily life, from food and drink to bathing habits to beliefs about the spirit world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Kaleidescopic panorama of an enigmatic culture.
- By Tarquin on 02-13-19
By: Orlando Figes