Giotto (The Arena Chapel)
Tags: Fresco, Lamentation, Proto-Renaissance
Giotto — The Father of Western Painting
The artist who takes the biggest step away from the spiritual style of the Middle Ages is Giotto. You could say, in fact, that Giotto changed the direction of art history! Giotto is perhaps best known for the frescos he painted in the Arena Chapel (click here for a virtual tour). They were commissioned by a wealthy man named Enrico Scrovengni, the son of a well-known money-lender. According to the Church, usury (charging interest for a loan) was a sin (!), and so Enrico probably built the chapel and had it decorated by Giotto to atone for the sin of his father’s profession.
Commissioning works of art for churches was a very common way of doing “good works” which could help earn one’s way into Heaven. We can see Enrico himself in a fresco of the Last Judgment on the west wall of the chapel, on the side of the blessed (or the elect) — those whom Christ has chosen to go to Heaven. He is shown giving a symbolic model of the Arena chapel itself to the Archangel Gabriel and two personifications of the Virgin Mary: the Virgin of Charity and the Virgin Annunciate (to whom the chapel was dedicated). In fact, on March 25 – the Feast of the Annunciate Virgin – sunlight enters one of the side windows and falls directly on the figure of Enrico. Clearly Enrico believed that his chapel, painted with scenes of the life of Christ and his parents, would earn him a place in paradise.
Here we see Enrico on his knees, donating the chapel.
The frescoes in the Arena Chapel tell the story of Mary and Christ on the long walls. By the altar Giotto painted the Annunciation, and at the other end, on the entrance wall, he painted the Last Judgment. That’s where Enrico appears donating the Chapel.
One of the scenes in the Arena Chapel from the life of Christ is the Lamentation. This is a common subject which depicts the moment after Christ has been removed from the cross, when his followers gather around his body and mourn his death. Mary Magdalene is shown with long red hair at Christ’s feet, and Christ lies in his mother’s lap. Have a close look at Giotto’s figures. They turn, and throw out their arms, and bend over. We see their fronts, their backs. You could say that this is the beginning of the Renaissance, since Giotto is so interested in representing something (even something divine and sacred) in a very familiar, relateable way. Look too at how each figure expresses his grief in a different way, as true individuals. Some throw their arms out, some are quiet. Remember that if you are a writer you can write about how everyone felt, but if you are an artist you have to show emotions through the movement of the body and through facial expressions. I always imagine Giotto going to funerals to study how human beings look when they are grieving.
Listen to a podcast about Giotto’s Lamentation by clicking the play button
