VENICE.- This is the original proposal that can be experienced at the Scuola Grande della Misericordia where, from July 12th to November 5th, Cose Belle d'Italia Media Entertainment offers “Magister Giotto”.

“Our goal”, explains Artistic Director Luca Mazzieri, “is to be able to communicate great Italian art around the world. For this reason, after Giotto we will be exploring Canova and Raphael, who will be the protagonists of further editions of ‘Magister’.

We have chosen Venice as the starting point for this long journey of Italian art through the five continents, because this city is the perfect synthesis between a great past and the most advanced contemporary aspects of art.”

The format created for "Magister Giotto" has no precedent.

In it, the boundaries between a great exhibition and a great show become so imperceptible as to be cancelled out. Absolute scientific rigour, however, remains the distinctive feature.

“Magister Giotto” sees the involvement not only of a renowned director in the person of Luca Mazzieri, and of Alessandra Costantini as architect and designer, but also the collaboration of other leading figures: Luca Zingaretti, for the narrating voice and Paolo Fresu for the music of the soundtrack. The project can also boast a number of leading scholars.

The scientific committee gathers together leading names in history and art criticism, such as Alessandro Tomei and Serena Romano Gosetti di Sturmeck. Stefano Paone has also collaborated by introducing Giotto into the contemporary world.

In addition to these, “Magister Giotto” can count on Giuliano Pisani, a classical philologist who examines the theological enquiry in the cycle of the Scrovegni Chapel and reveals the underlying "script" of the cycle drafted by Alberto da Padova, an Augustinian theologian who ended his life as a professor at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Another eminent member of the team is Cesare Barbieri, professor emeritus of astronomy at Padua University, who offers a vision of Giotto associated with the stars and astronomy. He will be introducing the Giotto Mission of 1986, founded by the European Space Agency, which was the first and only mission to launch a probe at a comet: it arrived at a distance of just 596 kilometres from the nucleus of the very comet depicted in the Adoration of the Magi in the Scrovegni Chapel.

Thanks to the work of this prestigious multidisciplinary team, the visitor will live the emotion of a great experience, and gain a greater understanding of Giotto and his works. So real will be the experience that he will be tempted to stretch out his hand to dry the tears of Giotto’s crucifixes, which for the first time will look him in the eyes rather than their perch high on a wall above. This thanks to innovative scenic reconstructions, designed by architects Corrado Foglia and Raffaele Di Vaio, combined with rare vintage footage.

Stunning images "embrace" the spectator, leading him on an intense journey that is ultimately nothing short of a spiritual experience. A journey that leads to the point where art is born, in the intimacy of a man-artist who began as pupil and developed into an absolute master, a Magister.

The narratives lead from Assisi and the Franciscan cycle of frescoes to the Scrovegni Chapel and then to the city of Florence, in a process in which the Italian art of the thirteenth century is told through the works of Giotto and his workshop, before moving on to the contemporary world with the space mission named after him.

"Magister Giotto", 750 years later, revives the complexity and appeal of the Florentine painter and architect, an artist and symbol of a medieval period which is here shown in a new light.

The exhibition reveals a man who won great fame among his contemporaries, as is witnessed by the many quotes and treatises about him while he was still alive. His work was very soon recognised as a turning point in Western pictorial culture, an anticipation of what would follow in the future. And as "Magister Giotto" makes abundantly clear, he is also a contemporary figure, then as now.