Like St Francis, Giotto was a great traveller and worked all over Italy. To see his greatest surviving works today, you need to journey from Florence to Padua in the Veneto and Assisi in Umbria.

The great Gothic church of Santa Croce in Florence celebrates a remarkable anniversary this year. Exactly seven centuries ago, the most influential painter of his time, Giotto di Bondone (c.1267-1337), started work on a series of frescoes in the Bardi Chapel, next to the high altar. His commission: to trace the story of the life of St Francis in six episodes.

The paintings have suffered greatly over the years. They have been covered up and rediscovered, over-painted and then sensitively restored. But the brilliance of his artistic genius still shines through the damaged surfaces. And, for me, it is the raw emotion expressed in one particular panel which always draws my eye. It represents the death of St Francis: the saint surrounded by distressed friars, some with heads bowed, others with hands raised, while Francis lies peaceful and impassive.

Ironically, this scene depicting a dying man is one of the best examples of Giotto’s extraordinary ability to breathe life into his art. Made when he was in his fifties, it encapsulates the ground-breaking aesthetic shift which he had been pioneering for the previous 30 years – his radical move away from the static and highly stylised representations of saints and biblical figures that were common to earlier medieval art towards something much more lifelike, a style which his audience could respond to more directly.

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