weekly question

space1.pdf

Home >Architecture and Design homework help >weekly question

Trecento (14th Century) 427

Madonna Enthroned. On nearly the same great scale as Cimabue’s enthroned Madonna (!"#. 14-6) is Giotto’s panel (!"#. 14-8) depicting the same subject, painted for the high altar of$ Florence’s Church of the Ognissanti (All Saints). Although still portrayed against the traditional gold background, Giotto’s Madonna sits on her Gothic throne with the unshakable stability of an ancient marble goddess (compare !"#. 7-30). Giotto replaced Cimabue’s slender Virgin, fragile beneath the thin ripplings of her drapery, with a weighty, queenly mother. In Giotto’s painting, the Madonna’s body is not lost—indeed, it is asserted. Giotto even showed Mary’s breasts pressing through the thin fabric of her white undergarment. Gold highlights have disappeared from her heavy robe. Giotto aimed instead to construct a %gure with substance and bulk—qualities suppressed in favor of a spiritual immateriality in Byzantine and Italo-Byzantine art. &e di'erent approaches of teacher and pupil can also be seen in the angels (anking the Madonna’s throne. Cimabue stacked his angels to %ll the full height of the panel. Giotto’s statuesque angels stand on a common level,

leaving a large blank area above the heads of the background %g- ures. &e Ognissanti Madonna marks the end of medieval painting in Italy and the beginning of a new naturalistic approach to art.

Arena Chapel. Giotto’s masterwork is the mural cycle of the Arena Chapel (!"#. 14-9) in Padua, which takes its name from an adjacent ancient Roman arena (amphitheater). A banker, Enrico Scrovegni, built the chapel on a site adjacent to his palace and consecrated it in 1305, in the hope that the chapel would atone for the moneylender’s sin of usury. Some scholars have suggested that Giotto may also have been the chapel’s architect, because its design so perfectly suits its interior decoration. &e rectangular hall has only six windows, all in the south wall, which provide ample

illumination for the frescoes that %ll the almost unbroken surfaces of the other walls.

In 38 framed scenes (!"#). 14-9A, 14-10, and 14-10A), Giotto presented one of the most impressive and complete Christian pictorial cycles ever rendered. &e narrative unfolds on the north and south walls in three zones, reading from top to bottom: in the top level are the lives of the Virgin and her parents, Joachim and Anna; in the middle zone, the life and mission of Jesus; and, in the lowest level, the Savior’s passion and resurrection. Below, imitation marble veneer—reminiscent of ancient Roman revetment (!"#. 7-51), which Giotto may have seen—alternates with personi%ed virtues and vices painted in grisaille (monochrome grays, o*en used for modeling in paintings) to resemble sculpture. On the west wall above the chapel’s entrance is Giotto’s dramatic Last Judgment, in which Scrovegni ap pears among the saved, kneeling as he presents his chapel to the Virgin. (Christ as Last Judge is also the culminating scene of Cavallini’s late-13th-century fresco cycle [!"#. 14-7] in Santa Cecilia in Trastevere in Rome. In fact, Giotto’s enthroned apostles are strikingly similar to Cavallini’s.) &e chapel’s vaulted ceiling is blue, an azure sky dotted with golden stars symbolic of Heaven. Medallions bearing images of Christ, Mary, and various prophets also appear on the vault. Giotto painted the same blue in the backgrounds of the narrative panels on the walls below. &e color thereby functions as a unifying agent for the entire decorative scheme.

Giotto set his goal as emulating the appearance of the natural world—the approach championed by the ancient Greeks and Romans but largely abandoned in the Middle Ages in favor of representing spiritual rather than physical reality (see “Picturing the Spiritual World,” page 260). Subtly scaled to the chapel’s space, Giotto’s stately

14-9 G!"##" $! B"%$"%&, interior of the Arena Chapel (Cappella Scrovegni; looking west), Padua, Italy, 1305–1306.

Giotto’s 38 panels in the Arena Chapel depict the lives of the Virgin, her parents, and Jesus. Enrico Scrovegni built the chapel in order to atone for his sin of moneylending and earn a place in Heaven.

14-9A GIOTTO, Entry into Jerusalem, ca. 1305.

30702_ch14_rev03_418-441.indd 427 08/06/18 5:34 pm

01 8

C en

ga ge

L ea

rn in

g. A

ll R

ig ht

s R

es er

ve d.

T hi

s co

nt en

t i s

no t y

et f

in al

a nd

C en

ga ge

L ea

rn in

g do

es n

ot g

ua ra

nt ee

th is

p ag

e w

il l c

on ta

in c

ur re

nt m

at er

ia l o

r m

at ch

th e

pu bl

is he

d pr

od uc