Guariento d'Arpo was Italian painter of gothic era. He was the leading painter of his time in Padua and is first recorded there as a master in 1338. The origin of his eclectic but highly distinctive style used to be posited in older accounts as the influence of a regional Byzantinism. Now it is explained rather as an alert and synthesis of trends present in works made by such artists as Giotto and Giovanni Pisano.
Guariento's style combines elements obviously drawn from Giotto's work in Padua and elsewhere with a more overtly Gothic sense of line and rhythm and a dramatic approach to narrative, occasionally verging on caricature.
