Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Saints

Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Saints from around 1302 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, demonstrates Giotto's approach to the formal, hierarchical altarpiece format. The monumental, solid figures show his characteristic ability to give devotional images the weight and presence of physical reality. Characteristic of the artist's mature approach, the work displays monumental three-dimensional figures with psychological weight, spatial coherence that makes flat surfaces feel inhabited, emotional drama in narrative scenes, rejection of Byzantine convention.

The enthroned Virgin and surrounding saints are rendered with the volumetric solidity and spatial clarity that marked Giotto's break from Byzantine flat, abstract conventions.