Book Review
15 January 2009, Review by Lynn Roberts
Padua's glorious enterprise
Giotto and the Arena Chapel: art, architecture and experience
Laura Jacobus
Harvey Miller, £94.50
Tablet bookshop price £85 Tel 01420 592974
The Arena Chapel, or Cappella Scrovegni, in Padua, is just over 700 years old, and entering it is like walking into an arched treasure chest full of colour, life and celestial visions. Restoration has given new clarity to the fresco cycles which cover every inch of the inner surface, and in this book Laura Jacobus performs the same service for the design, function and early history of the chapel. Her work is essentially a detective story, in which new facts are collected and existing evidence dissected, meticulously examined and reassembled in different forms; and, like the best detective stories, it is very hard (in spite of its size) to put down.
Over the past half century an explanation of the chapel's foundation based on partial or misunderstood accounts has arisen, passed from article to academic article and hardened into belief, so that it is almost invariably ascribed to an act of penitence by Enrico Scrovegni for the career in usury on which his father's fortune and his own were based. Penitence and usury have also been seen as major themes informing the narrative cycles of the frescoes, and Giotto himself as a painter working more or less solo to the programme prescribed for him by his patron.
Jacobus completely overturns these theories. She transcribes here the earliest texts dealing with purchase of the Arena land, endowment of the chapel, celebration of the Feast of the Annunciation in Padua, and the more or less scabrous, skewed accounts of Enrico and his father, Rainaldo. She has examined the chapel minutely, inside and out, documenting its original structure and the changes made to it even while it was being built. She has photographed every architectural or painted feature which could shed light on its design and function, and supplements these with computer-generated reconstructions, and with gloriously colourful images of the frescoes. She has also investigated Giotto's methods of working, the diverse groups which would have used the chapel and their relative perceptions of the narrative cycles, the influence of liturgical drama, and contemporary concerns with morality, decorous behaviour and social harmony.
From this great unwieldy jigsaw of pieces a fascinating picture is built up. We are shown Giotto, not as the enigma whose CV was a perfectly drawn freehand circle, but as an entrepreneur in charge of multiple projects in Rimini, Florence, Rome and Assisi. He is not merely a wall-painter, but is intimately involved in every aspect of the design of the chapel, insisting on the various original entrances and windows for his decorative, didactic programme, and probably driving the unknown architect into an early grave. He manipulates lighting effects in the chapel, using both natural and artificial sources to achieve spiritual intensity. He draws from life, and maintains a library of visual references, a practice thought not to have begun for another 100 years. He subcontracts work to other masters, retaining a strong supervisory interest throughout, and ensuring - probably by means of traceable templates - that recurring characters have consistently similar features. His colleagues are mainly, like Giotto himself, trained in anatomical drawing, and create tricky poses by drawing the nude directly on to the fresh plaster and covering it in painted drapery.
All of this is surprisingly unlike what one might have imagined usual, or even possible, in the early 1300s. It could be seen as very modern, if the inclusiveness of Giotto's vision were not dauntingly beyond the reach of most twenty-first-century artists. His control is analogous to that of the film producer who has also written the script, cast the parts, shot the film, created his own CGI and edited the result.
His patron is also understandable in modern terms. Enrico Scrovegni was a businessman, inheriting a fortune from his father and making another on his own behalf. With the part of his father's legacy which caused him unease (in case of any taint of usury) he had already built and endowed a convent. The Arena Chapel was associated with his marriage to the aristocratic Jacopina d'Este, and was a kind of spiritual and social fulcrum. It was intended to help him and his family to salvation, but also to lever them into the more exclusive levels of Paduan society. To this end, Enrico ensured its connection with the great Feast of the Annunciation celebrated annually in Padua.
He briefly accepted as co-partners the Cavalieri Gaudenti, or Knights of the Blessed Glorious Virgin, a sort of religious Round Table for whose benefit the crypt was included. Their presence determined the division of the nave by a marble screen with raised pulpit, reconstructed in the book; they also affected the choice of painted scenes, and elements such as knighthood, feasting and charitable work. Similarly the Scrovegni women, who would have viewed ceremonies in the chapel through an upstairs squint, triggered references to alms-giving and female propriety, as well as having the costumes and manners of their class reflected in the biblical figures before them.
Occasionally Jacobus' theories may appear - fleetingly - to be based like an upturned pyramid on a single assumption, but her idea of the design of the Arena Chapel as an "holistic" enterprise, overseen by Giotto, a great conductor marshalling spiritual, moral, social and visionary themes into one overwhelming harmonic experience, is lucidly argued, profound and exhilarating.