Infância de Giotto [Giotto's Childhood]

The character evoked in the painting is Giotto di Bondone (1266-1337), the great artist of the first phase of the Italian Renaissance, born in the small Tuscan village of Colle Vespignano, in a family of shepherds. Who tells us his story is Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), author of "The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects", who considered Giotto the savior and restorer of the art of painting that, for him, had been in decline since time of the Romans.

According to Vasari, Giotto, as a hobby, made out sketches of animals grazing on the rocks of the fields, using the sharp point of a small stone. One day the painter Cimabue (c. 1240-1302) was traveling between Vespignano and Florence when he saw the boy drawing. The master was enchanted by the boy's natural abilities and invited him to work with him. Still according to Vasari, in a short time of learning the young shepherd surpassed the master in the art of drawing, and became the most important artist of that period.

On the canvas of Pereira da Silva, one sees the young Giotto, then ten years old, sitting on a rock, with a staff in his left hand and a piece of chalk on the right. He is drawing one of the shepherding goats, in a hard posture. Pereira da Silva is not particularly faithful to the Vasari text, since he exchanges the sharp stone for a chalk and the sheep for goats. The boy carries a pan flute and wears leather pants and sandals and long socks, making him look like one of the classic representations of St. John the Baptist boy. In this screen the preponderance of color in the drawing is very evident, that is, almost in its totality, limited to cold blues and greens. This softened, diluted coloration is sometimes considered as hard and expressionless.