Scrovegni Chapel


The Scrovegni Chapel, also known as the Arena Chapel, is a small church, adjacent to the Augustinian monastery, the Monastero degli Eremitani in Padua, region of Veneto, Italy. The chapel and monastery are now part of the complex of the Musei Civici di Padova.
The chapel contains a fresco cycle by Giotto, completed around 1305 and an important masterpiece of Western art. In 2021, the chapel was declared part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of 14th-century fresco cycles composed of 8 historical buildings in Padua city centre. The Scrovegni Chapel contains the most important frescoes that marked the beginning of a revolution in mural painting and influenced fresco technique, style, and content for a whole century.

Description

Giotto and his team covered all the internal surfaces of the chapel with frescoes, including the walls and the ceiling. The nave is 20.88 metres long, 8.41 metres wide, and 12.65 metres high. The apse area is composed of a square area and a pentagonal area. The largest element is extensive cycles showing the Life of Christ and the Life of the Virgin. The wall at the rear of the church, through which the chapel is entered, has a large Last Judgement. There are also panels in grisaille showing the Vices and Virtues.
The church was dedicated to Santa Maria della Carità at the Feast of the Annunciation, 1303, and consecrated in 1305. Much of Giotto's fresco cycle focuses on the life of the Virgin Mary and celebrates her role in human salvation. A motet by Marchetto da Padova appears to have been composed for the dedication on 25 March 1305. The chapel is also known as the Arena Chapel because it was built on land purchased by Enrico Scrovegni that abutted the site of a Roman arena. The space was where an open-air procession and sacred representation of the Annunciation to the Virgin had been played out for a generation before the chapel was built.

History

Building and decoration

The Arena Chapel was commissioned to Giotto by the affluent Paduan banker, Enrico Scrovegni. In the early 1300s Enrico purchased from Manfredo Dalesmanini the area on which the Roman arena had stood. Here he had his luxurious palace built, as well as a chapel annexed to it. The chapel's project was twofold: to serve as the family's private oratory and as a funerary monument for himself and his wife. Enrico commissioned Giotto, the famous Florentine painter, to decorate his chapel. Giotto had previously worked for the Franciscan friars in Assisi and Rimini, and had been in Padua for some time, working for the Basilica of Saint Anthony in the Sala del Capitolo and in the Blessings's Chapel.
A number of 14th-century sources testify to Giotto's presence at the Arena Chapel's site. The fresco cycle can be dated with a good approximation to a series of documentary testimonies: the purchase of the land took place on 6 February 1300; the bishop of Padua, Ottobono dei Razzi, authorised the building some time prior to 1302 ; the chapel was first consecrated on 25 March 1303, the feast day of the Annunciation; on 1 March 1304 Pope Benedict XI granted an indulgence to whoever visited the chapel; one year later on 25 March 1305 the chapel received its definitive consecration. Giotto's work thus falls in the period from 25 March 1303 to 25 March 1305.
Giotto, who was born around 1267, was 36–38 years old when he worked at Enrico Scrovegni's chapel. He had a team of about 40 collaborators, and they calculated that 625 work days were necessary to paint the chapel. A "work day" meant that portion of each fresco that could be painted before the plaster dried and was no longer "fresh".
In January 1305, friars from the nearby Church of the Eremitani filed a complaint to the bishop, protesting that Scrovegni had not respected the original agreement. Scrovegni was transforming his private oratory into a church with a bell tower, thus producing unfair competition with the Eremitani's activities. We do not know what happened next, but it is likely that, as a consequence of this complaint, the monumental apse and the wide transept were demolished. Both are visible on a model of the church painted by Giotto on the counter-façade. The apse was the section where Enrico Scrovegni had meant to have his tomb. The presence of frescoes dating to after 1320 supports the demolition hypothesis proposed by Giuliano Pisani. The apse, the most significant area in all churches, is where Enrico and his wife, Jacopina d'Este, were buried.
This apse presents a narrowing of the space which gives a sense of its being incomplete and inharmonious. When one observes the lower frame of the triumphal arch, right above Saint Catherine of Alexandria's small altar piece, Giotto's perfect symmetry is altered by a fresco decoration representing two medallions with busts of female saints, a lunette with Christ in glory, and two episodes from the Passion (the prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane and the Flagellation of Christ, which together give an overall sense of disharmony. The artist who painted these scenes also painted the greater part of the apse, an unknown artist called "The Master of the Scrovegni Choir" who worked at the Chapel about twenty years after Giotto's work was completed. The main focus of the unknown artist's work is constituted by six monumental scenes on the side walls of the chancel that depict the last period of Mary's earthly life. This choice is in tune with the iconographic program inspired by Alberto da Padova and painted by Giotto.

Modern period

The chapel was originally connected with the Scrovegni palace, which was built on what remained of the foundations of the elliptical ancient Roman arena. The palace was demolished in 1827 in order to sell the precious materials it contained and to erect two condominiums in its place. The chapel was purchased by the Municipality of the City of Padua in 1881, a year after the City Council's deliberation of 10 May 1880 leading to a decision to demolish the condominiums and restore the chapel.
In June 2001, following a preparation study lasting over 20 years, the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro of the Ministry for Cultural Activities, in collaboration with Padua's Town Hall in its capacity of owner of the Arena Chapel, started a full-scale restoration of Giotto's frescoes under the late Giuseppe Basile's technical direction. In 2000 the consolidation and restoration of the external surfaces had been completed and the adjacent "Corpo Tecnologico Attrezzato" had been installed. In this "equipped technological chamber" visitors wait for fifteen minutes to allow their body humidity to be lowered and any accompanying smog dust to be filtered out. In March 2002 the chapel was reopened to the public in its original splendor. A few problems remain unsolved, such as flooding in the crypt under the nave due to the presence of an underlying aquifer, and the negative effect on the building's stability of the cement inserts that replaced the original wooden ones in the 1960s.

Scholarly debates

's studies argued that a number of commonly held beliefs concerning the chapel are groundless, among them, the notion that Dante inspired Giotto. However, a posthumous portrait of Dante was included in the Paradise section of the frescoes. Another claim was that the theological program followed by Giotto is based on St Thomas Aquinas, whereas Pisani claims it to be wholly Augustinian. Pisani also argued against the conjecture that the Frati Gaudenti fraternity, of which Enrico Scrovegni was a member, influenced the content of Giotto's fresco cycle. He also argued against the belief that Enrico Scrovegni required that the iconography program have no emphasis placed on the sin of usury. Giuliano Pisani pointed out that Dante's condemnation of Scrovegni's father, Reginaldo, as a usurer in Canto 17 of the Inferno dates to a few years after Giotto's completion of the chapel, so it cannot be regarded as a motive behind any theological anxieties on the part of Enrico Scrovegni. Pisani's arguments have not yet been widely embraced by the scholarly community, and that debates persist regarding the impetus for the chapel's creation and the reasons behind its design.
According to Pisani, Giotto painted the chapel's inner surface following a comprehensive iconographic and decorative project devised by the Augustinian theologian, Friar Alberto da Padova. Among the sources utilized by Giotto following Friar Alberto's advice are the Apocryphal Gospels of Pseudo-Matthew and Nicodemus, the Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine and, for a few minute iconographic details, Pseudo-Bonaventure's Meditations on the Life of Jesus Christ, as well as a number of Augustinian texts, such as De doctrina Christiana, De libero arbitrio, De Genesi contra Manicheos, De quantitate animae, and other texts from the Medieval Christian tradition, among which is the Phisiologus.
Most Giotto scholarship believes that Giotto had made a number of theological mistakes. For instance, Giotto placed Hope after Charity in the Virtues series, and did not include Avarice in the Vices series, due to the usual representation of Enrico Scrovegni as a usurer. Giuliano Pisani asserts that Giotto followed a careful and deliberate theological programme based on Saint Augustine and devised by Friar Alberto da Padova. Avarice, far from being "absent" in Giotto's cycle, is portrayed with Envy, forming with it a fundamental component of a more comprehensive sin. For this reason Envy is placed facing the virtue of Charity, to indicate that Charity is the exact opposite of Envy, and that in order to cure oneself of the sin of Envy one needs to learn from Charity. Charity crushes Envy's money bag under her feet, while on the opposite wall red flames burn under Envy's feet.

The depiction of the sacred stories, and the message of the vault

Giotto frescoed the chapel's whole surface, including the walls and the ceiling. The fresco cycle is organized along four tiers, each of which contains episodes from the stories of the various protagonists of the Sacred History. Each tier is divided into frames, each forming a scene. The chapel is asymmetrical in shape, with six windows on the longer south wall, and this shape determined the layout of the decoration. The first step was choosing to place two frames between each double window set on the south wall; secondly, the width and height of the tiers was fixed in order to calculate the same space on the opposite north wall.
Cycles of scenes showing the Life of Christ and the Life of the Virgin were the grandest form of religious art in the period, and Giotto's cycle is unusually large and comprehensive, showing the ambition of the commission. Allowing for this, the selection and iconography of the scenes is broadly comparable to other contemporary cycles; Giotto's innovation lies in the monumentality of his forms and the clarity of his compositions.
The cycle recounts the story of salvation. It starts from high up on the lunette of the triumphal arch, with the uncommon scene of God the Father instructing the Archangel Gabriel to perform the Annunciation to Mary. The narrative continues with the stories of Joachim and Anne and the stories of Mary. After a return to the triumphal arch, the scenes of the Annunciation and the Visitation follow. The stories of Christ were placed on the middle tier of the south and north walls. The scene of Judas receiving the money to betray Jesus is on the triumphal arch. The lower tier of the south and north walls shows the Passion and Resurrection; the last frame on the north wall shows the Pentecost. The fourth tier begins at ground level with the monochromes of the Vices and the Virtues. The west wall presents the Last Judgment.
The scenes depicted are as follows:
Sacred stories:
Triumphal arch :
  • The Annunciation to Mary;
Upper tier, south wall:
  • The Expulsion of Joachim
  • Joachim amongst the shepherds
  • An angel comes to Anna in prayer announcing the birth of Mary
  • Joachim sacrifices a kid goat to the Lord
  • Joachim's dream
  • Joachim meets Anna at the Golden Gate
Upper tier, north wall:
Triumphal arch:
  • The Annunciation
  • Visitation
Middle tier, south wall:
Middle tier, north wall:
Triumphal arch:
  • Judas's betrayal
Lower tier, south wall:
Lower tier, north wall;
Bottom tier, north wall: Vices:
  • Stultitia
  • Inconstantia
  • Ira
  • Iniustitia
  • Infidelitas
  • Invidia
  • Desperatio
Bottom tier, south wall: Seven virtues:
Counter-façade:
The vault presents the eighth day, the time of eternity, God's time, with eight planets and two suns, while the blue sky is studded with eight-point stars.