(piano playing)
Dr. Zucker: We're in the Arena Chapel,
a small private chapel that was connected
to a palace that was owned by the Scrovegni family.
Dr. Harris: It was the Scrovegni family who
commissioned Giotto to decorate this chapel
with frescoes.
Dr. Zucker: It's called the Arena Chapel because
it's next to an Ancient Roman arena.
Dr. Harris: When you're inside it, as we are now,
I have to say that it's taller than I expected
and that feeling of being enclosed by images
that happens when you're in a space entirely
covered with fresco.
Dr. Zucker: There are lots of narrative scenes,
but even in between those scene's are trompe l'oeil,
faux marble panels.
We get the sense that there is inlaid stone,
but, in fact, this is all painting.
Dr. Harris: That extends even onto the ceiling
where we have a star-studded blue sky with
images of Christ and Mary
and other Saint's and figures.
Dr. Zucker: The Arena Chapel is organized in
a very strict way.
Three registers begin at the top
and move downward.
I think of it as kind of a spiral that is,
it tells a continuous story.
It begins with Christ's grandparents,
it goes in to the birth of Mary,
her marriage, and then when we get down to the
second register we get to Christ's life
or ministry.
Then, the bottom register is the Passion,
these are the events at the end of Christ's life
and immediately after his death.
Dr. Harris: All of this is thanks to,
strangely it might seem to us today,
a sin, the sin of usury that weighted heavily
on the conscience of Enrico Scrovegni
who's palace was next door and who owned this land
and built this Chapel and hired Giotto.
His father was a usurer, Enrico,
himself was a usurer.
Dr. Zucker: What this means is he charged interest.
Just like when you borrow money from a bank
you're charged interest.
When you put money on a credit card you're
charged interest and so in a very Catholic
environment being a banker made you a lot of money
but it also, within your belief system,
would send you to Hell.
And Dante, the great, late, Medieval poet
in his most famous poem, The Divine Comedy,
singles out Scrovegni's father for one of the more
treacherous parts of Hell.
Dr. Harris: So Enrico was really worried
and for this reason he did,
in Catholic belief system, a good work.
He built this Chapel, this was his way of
atoning for the sin of usury hoping that this would
help his soul to go to Heaven.
We see Enrico, himself, here in this Chapel on the
wall over the entrance where Giotto painted
The Last Judgement, we see Enrico kneeling
handing the Chapel over to the Virgin Mary.
Dr. Zucker: He's handing it to the three Mary's,
the Virgin Mary in the middle.
Dr. Harris: Notice where Enrico has put himself,
he's on the side of the blessed.
In The Last Judgement you see Christ at the
very top, and the damned are on Christ's left
and the blessed are on Christ's right
and that's where we find Enrico.
Dr. Zucker: And the Impetus for the entire cycle
can be seen at the apex of the triumphal arch
on the opposite wall with God, who he calls Gabriel
to his side telling him to go to the Virgin Mary
and announce to her that she will bear
humanities savior, that she will bear Christ.
Dr. Harris: Interestingly when Giotto painted God
he inserted a panel painting.
That is not fresco, it's interesting that he choose
to paint it in a style that was more conservative,
less earthly within the style that we see
in the frescoes.
Just to go back to that annunciation
and this wall, we begin to see the illusion-ism
that we see throughout the cycles.
If we look to Mary and the angel,
Giotto has created an architectural space
for each of them.
These are not panel paintings with gold
backgrounds that suggest a divine space,
these are earthly settings for Mary and the angel.
Dr. Zucker: There's another great example of the
way that architecture and the sense of space
is constructed, even in this era before
linear perspective.
Two scenes below the Enunciation are these
wonderful empty architectural spaces, these rooms,
that have oil lanterns that hang from their ceiling
and there is such a delicate sense of
space of light and shadow.
It is this bravura example of naturalism
and it shows Giotto's interest in the world,
the present, the physical space
that humanity occupies.
(piano playing)