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Love Quote by Giotto di Bondone

"The human heart is as a frail craft on which we wish to reach the stars"

About this Quote

A medieval painter reaching for the cosmos with a metaphor that quietly admits how risky the trip is. Giotto’s line makes the “human heart” both vehicle and vulnerability: not a noble chariot but a frail craft, a little boat of feeling and will, asked to do the impossible work of spiritual ascent. It’s an image that fits an artist who helped move Western painting from flat icon to lived space. Giotto’s revolution was never just technical; it was theological and psychological. He put weight in bodies, sorrow in faces, gravity in gestures. The heart, in his art, is where faith stops being doctrine and becomes experience.

The intent isn’t to romanticize emotion but to frame longing as an act of navigation. “We wish to reach the stars” smuggles in ambition, even hubris, yet the craft is “frail,” implying that desire alone doesn’t grant safe passage. That tension is the engine: aspiration doesn’t cancel precarity; it heightens it. Giotto’s era was saturated with cosmic order - a heaven mapped above a brutal, contingent earthly life. The subtext is that transcendence is not guaranteed, and the materials we have to attempt it (love, devotion, conscience, imagination) are breakable.

Context matters: in the wake of new urban wealth, Franciscan spirituality, and a growing attention to individual interiority, Giotto’s world was learning to take personal feeling seriously without trusting it completely. The quote lands like a painter’s manifesto: render the soul’s reach, but never forget the cracked wood under your feet.

Quote Details

TopicDeep
Source
Later attribution: Giotto di Bondone (Hourly History, 2020) modern compilationID: soJrEQAAQBAJ
Text match: 95.00%   Provider: Google Books
Evidence:
A Life from Beginning to End Hourly History. Chapter Seven Giotto , the Architect “ The human heart is as a frail craft on which we wish to reach the stars . " -Giotto As has been stated , the concept of " artist " or " painter " was ...
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Bondone, Giotto di. (2026, February 12). The human heart is as a frail craft on which we wish to reach the stars. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-human-heart-is-as-a-frail-craft-on-which-we-8326/

Chicago Style
Bondone, Giotto di. "The human heart is as a frail craft on which we wish to reach the stars." FixQuotes. February 12, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-human-heart-is-as-a-frail-craft-on-which-we-8326/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The human heart is as a frail craft on which we wish to reach the stars." FixQuotes, 12 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-human-heart-is-as-a-frail-craft-on-which-we-8326/. Accessed 19 Feb. 2026.

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The Human Heart: A Frail Craft to Reach the Stars
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About the Author

Giotto di Bondone

Giotto di Bondone (1266 AC - January 8, 1337) was a Artist from Italy.

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