My art historian colleagues know that Giotto is a very appropriate and sophisticated name for a crayon product in Italy, or any other place on earth for that matter, named for the historic person, Giotto (1266/7 –  1337), who is considered to be the first in the line of the amazing artists who transformed the history of painting into the Italian Renaissance.

 

So, when walking through a grocery or other inexpensive store in Italy, my eye is always drawn to the children’s art products bearing the Giotto name.  These items never fail to make me smile.

If you look a little closer on the packaging, you’ll notice this little vignette of two men, one sketching a sheep on a rock, in front of a tree.

I don’t know how many schoolchildren in Italy appreciate the vignette’s significance, but I’m going to wager that most art teachers there get the reference.

Cognoscenti know well the story of Giotto’s life, including the moment his artistic genius was recognized.  In his famous book, Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari, the first art historian, relates that Giotto was a happy and intelligent child,  loved by all who knew him, and one day the great Florentine painter, Cimabue, literally stumbled across Giotto drawing pictures of his sheep on a rock. The pictures were so lifelike that Cimabue asked Giotto’s father if he could take the boy as an apprentice. The rest, as we say, is history.

So the Fila company uses that crucial moment of Giotto’s genius as their trademark image on all of their children’s art products.

I think that’s pretty sweet!  Don’t you?