Giotto was an Italian painter and architect. He is generally considered the first in a line of great artists who contributed to and developed the Italian Renaissance. He stands as the key link between the Byzantine art of the late middle ages, and the more realistic and humanistic art which flowered in the Renaissance. The flat, symbolic figures grouped in decorative space gave way to the modeled, individualized figures interacting in space which for the first time contained perspective. It is said that when Giotto painted he was holding up a mirror to show us mankind. The feelings and emotions his images produce are as powerful as the subject matter itself.