What is "giotto"

Giotto was a European robotic spacecraft mission from the European Space Agency. The spacecraft flew by and studied Halley's Comet and in doing so became the first spacecraft to make close up observations of a comet. On 13 March 1986, the mission succeeded in approaching Halley's nucleus at a distance of 596 kilometers. The spacecraft was named after the Early Italian Renaissance painter Giotto di Bondone. He had observed Halley's Comet in 1301 and was inspired to depict it as the star of Bethlehem in his painting Adoration of the Magi.

Giotto di Bondone (1266/7 – January 8, 1337), known mononymously as Giotto , was an Italian painter and architect from Florence in the late Middle Ages. He is generally considered the first in a line of great artists who contributed to the Renaissance.

Giotto's contemporary, the banker and chronicler Giovanni Villani, wrote that Giotto was "the most sovereign master of painting in his time, who drew all his figures and their postures according to nature. And he was given a salary by the Comune of Florence in virtue of his talent and excellence."

The late-16th century biographer Giorgio Vasari describes Giotto as making a decisive break with the prevalent Byzantine style and as initiating "the great art of painting as we know it today, introducing the technique of drawing accurately from life, which had been neglected for more than two hundred years."

Giotto's masterwork is the decoration of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, also known as the Arena Chapel, completed around 1305. This fresco cycle depicts the Life of the Virgin and the Life of Christ. It is regarded as one of the supreme masterpieces of the Early Renaissance. That Giotto painted the Arena Chapel and that he was chosen by the Commune of Florence in 1334 to design the new campanile (bell tower) of the Florence Cathedral are among the few certainties of his biography. Almost every other aspect of it is subject to controversy: his birthdate, his birthplace, his appearance, his apprenticeship, the order in which he created his works, whether or not he painted the famous frescoes in the Upper Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi, and his burial place.

Giotto may refer to:

• Giotto di Bondone (1267–1337), Italian painter
  • Giotto's Campanile, Florence
• Giotto Bizzarrini (born 1926), Italian automobile engineer
• Giotto Griffiths (1864–1938), Welsh rugby player
• Giotto (spacecraft), European Space Agency probe that observed Halley's comet
• Ferrero Giotto, a brand of round wafer-based snacks
• Giotto, a Linux bootable floppy disk
• Giotto, a psychological test to measure personal integrity
• Giotto, fictional character in the manga and anime series Katekyō Hitman Reborn!
• 7367 Giotto, main-belt asteroid

Giotto is a crater on Mercury. It has a diameter of 150 kilometers. Its name was adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1976. Giotto is named for the Italian painter Giotto di Bondone, who lived from 1271 to 1377.