Giotto
c. 1267 – 1337 · 70 years · Florence · Europe
Painter who broke with Byzantine convention, bringing volume and emotion back to art; a forerunner of the Renaissance.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 13th century
Portrait: Frieda · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Dante Alighieri — poet, author of the Divine Comedy, 2 years older
- Philip IV the Fair — king who destroyed the Knights Templar, 1 year younger
- Edward I Longshanks — conqueror of Wales, called the Hammer of the Scots, 28 years older
- Edward III — king who began the Hundred Years' War and won at Crécy, 45 years younger
- Rudolf I — first Habsburg king, who won Austria for his house, 49 years older
- Charles IV — emperor who made Prague an imperial capital and issued the Golden Bull, 49 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Ivan Kalita — prince who began the gathering of Russian lands around Moscow, 21 years younger
- Sergius of Radonezh — saint and abbot, 47 years younger
- Yury of Moscow — first Moscow prince to become grand prince of Vladimir, 14 years younger
- Daniel of Moscow — first prince of Moscow, founder of the Moscow line of the Rurikids, 6 years older
- Simeon the Proud — grand prince "of all Rus" who died of the plague, 49 years younger
- Ivan II the Fair — grand prince of Moscow, father of Dmitry Donskoy, 59 years younger
Middle East
Africa
- Mansa Musa — ruler of the Mali Empire, 13 years younger
- Ibn Battuta — traveller, 37 years younger
Asia
- Marco Polo — Venetian traveller, 13 years older
- Kublai Khan — Great Khan, founder of the Yuan dynasty, 52 years older
- Emperor Go-Daigo — emperor who overthrew the Kamakura shogunate, 21 years younger
- Ashikaga Takauji — founder of the Muromachi shogunate who turned on Go-Daigo, 38 years younger
- Gajah Mada — prime minister of Majapahit, 23 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1271 Kublai Khan founds the Yuan dynasty — aged 4, Asia
- 1271–1295 Travels of Marco Polo — aged 4, Asia
- c. 1280 Polynesians settle New Zealand — aged 13, Oceania
- 1281 Kamikaze, the divine wind — aged 14, Asia
- 1293 Founding of Majapahit — aged 26, Asia
- c. 1300 Onset of the Little Ice Age — aged 33, Europe
- 1309–1377 Avignon Papacy — aged 42, Europe
- 1315–1317 Great Famine — aged 48, Europe
- 1324 Hajj of Mansa Musa — aged 57, Africa
- c. 1325 Founding of Tenochtitlan — aged 58, Americas
- c. 1327 The Djinguereber Mosque in Timbuktu — aged 60, Africa
- 1337–1453 Hundred Years' War — aged 70, Europe
- c. 1337 Sergius of Radonezh founds his monastery — aged 70, Eastern Europe & Russia