TrecentoCultural
Giotto's Scrovegni Chapel Frescoes
Giotto di Bondone completes the fresco cycle in Padua, breaking from Byzantine convention with a new naturalism that anticipates the Renaissance.
Commissioned by the Paduan banker Enrico Scrovegni, partly to expiate the usury of his father Reginaldo (whom Dante had placed among the damned), the Arena Chapel cycle covers the walls with the lives of the Virgin and of Christ, set against a deep lapis-lazuli sky. Giotto abandoned the gold grounds and weightless figures of the Italo-Byzantine maniera greca in favour of solid bodies that cast shadows, occupy convincing architectural space, and register human emotion through gesture and glance. The Lamentation of Christ, with its mourners hunched over the dead body and angels writhing in the sky, became the touchstone of dramatic painting for every later generation. Vasari would later credit Giotto with re-founding the art of painting, and modern historians treat the Scrovegni frescoes as the first decisive step from medieval icon to Renaissance picture.
