CAPPELLA DEGLI SCROVEGNI

Padua boasts one of the most extraordinary and revolutionary masterpieces of medieval art. The complete series of 36 panels painted by Giotto between 1303 and 1305 (the first and best known being in Assisi) illustrates the story of Mary and that of Christ up to the Redemption and the Last Judgement. These paintings were commissioned by Enrico Scrovegni, who came from a 14th century patrician family (whose sarcophagus is in the back of the chapel). This patrician sought to save from eternal damnation the soul of his father, a usurer whose story was known in Padua and the rest of Italy, for even Dante, in his Inferno, tells us about it. Here the painter has made innovations that will have a lasting influence on Italian painting, freeing himself from the Byzantine pictorial tradition: approaches to perspective, naturalistic details and cut-outs of scenes by landscapes. Man and God, the sense of nature and that of history, the sense of humanity and that of faith are illustrated here with a poetry and sentimentality unequalled in the history of art. The treatment of colour and light is disconcertingly modern. In a cramped space, he decides to condense the New Testament, starting with the story of Anne and Joachim, the parents of the Virgin Mary, to continue with the life of Mary and that of Jesus and end on the reverse side with the Last Judgement. Don't miss to observe some singular details during your 15-minute visit. Here are some of them: Lucifer or the Monster of the Underworld at the bottom right in the scene of the Last Judgement and the gates of Heaven at the top (left and right) surrounded sometimes by the moon, sometimes by the sun; the smiling and friendly figure of the donkey carrying on its back the Virgin Mary in the Flight into Egypt and Jesus in the Arrival of Christ in Jerusalem (notice also the children perched on the trees, wanting to see him at all costs!); the many very expressive angels painted by Giotto (including our favourite, the angel in Joachim's dream that descends towards him in the middle of a dream), but also the poetic and realistic stars in the vault under a night-blue sky; the kiss of Judas and the incredible look of a traitor, the unparalleled pain in the expression of the Virgin and Saint John in the lament over the body of the dead Christ... This chapel and its frescoes form a rare masterpiece whose visit is a must when visiting Padua.