After his return from Rome, Giotto sojourned for a time in Florence, and in 1304 or thereabouts painted the gigantic Madonna formerly in the Trinità, Figure [13]. It is impressive in mass, admirable in the intent expression of the attendant angels, rich in color, but the great figure is unhappily crowded by the canopy. Giotto is still a bit uncertain as to the rendering of space, and makes a good if unpleasing effort to suggest depth despite the limitations of a gold background. With all its nobility and tenderness, this is by no means so good a decoration as the great Madonna by Cimabue, Figure [4], which hangs nearby in the Uffizi.
With the problems of space and mass, Giotto was soon to cope triumphantly. A wealthy citizen of Padua, Enrico Scrovegni, was planning a new chapel to the Virgin Annunciate. Doubtless he wished the repose of his father’s soul, for his father had been a notorious usurer. Dante incontinently puts him in hell with other profiteers. Enrico Scrovegni built his chapel near the ruins of a Roman arena and dedicated it March 25, 1305. The Arena Chapel was a brick box, barrel vaulted within—a magnificent space for a fresco painter. Giotto spread upon it the noblest cycle of pictures known to Christian art. Over the chancel arch he painted the Eternal, surrounded by swaying angels, and listening to the counter-pleas of Justice and Mercy concerning doomed mankind, with the Archangel Gabriel serenely awaiting the message that should bring Christ to Mary’s womb and salvation to earth. This is the Prologue. Opposite on the entrance wall is the Epilogue—a last judgment, with Christ enthroned as Supreme Judge amid the Apostles, and the just being parted from the wicked. Amid the just you may see Enrico Scrovegni presenting the chapel to three angels.
The side walls are ruled off into three rows of pictures, with ornate border bands and a basement of sculpturesque figures symbolizing the seven virtues and vices. The story reads down from above. Below the azure vault and still a little in the curve are the stories of the Childhood of the Virgin—nothing in the chapel more simple and stately than these.[[10]] The middle course is devoted to the early deeds of Christ, from his birth to the expulsion of the money lenders from the temple. The lower row depicts His Passion ending with the Miracle of Pentecost. Much later a disciple of Giotto completed the story with the last days of the Virgin, in the Choir. Thus the narrative in its broadest sense is a life of the Virgin Mary, including that of her Divine Son, and both lives are brought into an eternal scheme of things by the prologue, which shows a relenting God, and the Epilogue which shows a now relentless Christ awarding bliss and woe to the race for all eternity.
Fig. 13. Giotto. Madonna Enthroned.—Uffizi.
The first impression of a visitor to the chapel will be a feeling of awe qualified by joy in the loveliest of colors. The whites of the classical draperies dominate. They are shot with rose, or pale blue, or grey green. Certain old enamels have the same quality of making the most splendid crimsons, blues, and greens seem merely foils to foreground masses of white which seem to include by implication all the positive colors. It is this bright and original color scheme balancing crimsons and azures with violets and greens which makes a thing of beauty out of what would otherwise be a stilted checkerboard arrangement.
Fig. 13a. St. Joachim and St. Anna at the Beautiful Giotto Gate.—Arena, Padua.
Fig. 14. Giotto. The Flight into Egypt.—Arena, Padua.