Giotto's Hell

No figure deserves greater credit than Giotto di Bondone, for ushering in the revolution in art that we now know as the Renaissance.  Though others, like Cimabue, had shifted from the constraints of Gothic art, Giotto introduced a degree of naturalism that had not been seen since the natural world.  Naturalistic, yet not classical in sensibility.  Greco-Roman art is marked by a kind of heroic theatrics, grotesque at times, and always idealized.  These vulgar tendencies would eventually make their way into Renaissance art, but, for brief moment at its inception, Renaissance painting had a poetic calm, inherited from Gothic spiritualism.  Giotto preserves that poetry, but translates the otherworldly focus into something movingly terrestrial.

I recently had the great thrill of seeing Giotto’s masterpiece, the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (known to art historians as the Arena, because a roman arena once stood on the same site).  Enrico Scrovegni came from a money lending family, and allegedly built the chapel in order to compensate for the sin of usury, which might otherwise mean an eternity in hell.  He commissioned Giotto to pain frescos covering all the interior walls of the chapel.  The work, completed rapidly between 1305 and 1306, is one of the greatest masterpieces in the history of art.  The two walls are divided into rectangular tableaus, depicting the life of Mary and of Jesus.  Portraits of the two also appear on the ceiling, like two planets set against as starry blue, protecting parishioners like a heavenly mantel.  On the central rear wall of the chapel, we find Giotto’s piece de la resistance: the Last Judgment.  At the threshold of Giotto’s hell, Giotto depicts his patron, Scrovegni, delivering the chapel as his gift of penance. 

Goitto’s hell is a remarkable place.    It seems to pour out of a lava pool from the foot of an enthroned Christ figure, who looms with stiff majesty above flanks of angels.  The lava pool is a tangle of tortured bodies set against a dark background.  Some are strung up like drying meat, other lie limply, like rags, and still others writhe in pain.  Interspersed among them, we find teams of gray-blue demons, who prod and torment the hapless naked damned.  There is also a hanging Judas.  Elsewhere in the cycle, Judas appears, hook nosed, receiving a payoff for betrayal, with a shadowy demon coaxing him on.

At the center of Giotto’s hell, we find an enormous and imposing Satan, one of the greatest monster’s in western art.  Giotto’s Satan is a portly slate blue figure, with furry jowls and twisting horns.  He is perched on a man-eating dragon, his feet are crushing other a cluster of bodies, and each outstretched hand holds another body.  Most disturbingly, the lower half of a human body dangles from Satan’s mouth, forecasting Goya’s infamous black painting of Saturn Devouring his Son.  Giotto’s This Satan is king of cannibals, an unmovable mountain of cruelty whose round belly practically pulsates with the girth of previous fleshy meals.

Curiously, Giotto’s Satan also bears a striking resemblance to the Mahakalas of Tibetan art.  The one reproduced below was recently auctioned at Christie's.  Mahakala is a protector.  Placed in a home or a monastery, he would protect his owners, by absorbing and deflecting evil forces.  Given the resemblance, one wonders whether Giotto had seen such images, or whether an influential Tibetan painter had made a field trip to Padua.  In any case, the Tibetan works invite a kind of Gestalt shift.  For all his ravenous menace, it is hard not to see Giotto’s Satan as a positive presence.  He serves as a warning for believers, and thus has a didactic function that can be regarded as positive.  But he also functions as an artistic domestication of evil.  By depicting Satan so compellingly, as the visual epicenter of the Arena frescos, Giotto has converted evil into an enchanting mythic beast.  This is a fairly tale Satan, part of a gripping moral tale, but far from charmless.  Indeed, Satan’s posture echoes the enthroned Christ, but he steels the show.

Echoes, incidentally, are a fundamental feature to Giotto’s Arena.  There are multiple points of compositional and narrative parallelism.  Some examples are reproduced above.  There are two panels with seated figures, two panels with figures on horseback, two sloping mountains with a tree, two mobs with spears, two hangings, two sacrifices (Joachim’s and Christ on the Cross), two babies in bed, two expulsions, two resurrections, two gaping holes (heaven and hell), two kisses, and two annunciations, and two figures bearing the chests.  One these two figures is Caiphas, who condemns Christ, and in that very moment rends his clothes to expresses contempt.  The other figure is the female personification of anger, one of the seven deadly sins.

Giotto’s seven sins are unconventional.  Anger is standardly included on lists of sins, and Giotto also has one other conventional sins: Envy.  But his list also includes Injustice, Inconstancy, Infidelity, Folly, and Despair.  Missing are Avarice, Gluttony, Lust, Pride, and Sloth.   Giotto’s omissions relate to his principle of parallelism:  he depicts seven virtues.  But it is hard to resist the idea that there is something editorial going on here, as my colleague Doug Lackey argues in a wonderful paper, “Giotto in Padua: A New Geography of the Human Soul.”  By removing Lust and Gluttony, Giotto distances himself from asceticism.  By including Folly, he denounce blind faith, an attitude that also comes through in a small cartoon of a person with sticks for eyes, painted nearby the Folly figure discreetly above the Chapel’s side door (so discrete, in fact, that I didn't find her until I made a second visit).  The omission of Pride raises questions about Giotto’s own ego (he may have recognized the magnitude of his own artistic achievement), but it may also reflect the emerging humanism at the dawn of the 14th century.  Giotto implicitly invites viewers to take pride in human accomplishments.   Perhaps most touching is his inclusion of Despair among the sins, and its counterpart, Hope, among the virtues.  As someone who is deservedly regarded as the first Renaissance painter, it is fitting that Giotto advocates a positive outlook on life.

This brings us back to Giotto’s hell.  Fire and brimstone theories promote fear, and one might expect a similar mood to pervade a chapel whose central panel depicts the Last Judgment.  It is also believed to have been a funerary chapel, because of its barrel roof.  But Giotto resists that sentiment.  Unlike some of his Flemish counterparts who paint hell with terrifying relish, Giotto’s hell is more positively contextualized in the twilight blue of the Arena.  It is one option for humankind, but also a place of myth and legend.  The chapel itself embodies another option: beauty, creativity, and a celebration of human life.

Frickin' Piero della Francesca

Piero della Francesca has been hostage to changing fortunes.   In his time, Duke Guidobaldo (who was immortalized in a portrait by Raphael) called him the "prince of modern painters."  He is also honored with a chapter in Vasari's Lives of Artists and credited there with being the greatest geometer of his time, in addition to being a great painter.  Soon after, however, he drifted into veritable neglect.  In the Anglophone world, he was mentioned only passingly until the 19th century when he caught the attention of Charles Eastlake, first director of London's National Gallery.  By the turn of the 20th century, he had something of a cult following, with monographs written on him, and lectures by Roger Fry, who is also credited with bringing both post-impressionism and African art into British and American consciousness.  Under Fry's influence, Piero's fame grew steadily.  Modernists saw him as a precursor to their art and, in 1925, we find Aldous Huxley calling Piero's Resurrection (above), "the best picture in the world."

Interestingly, Roger Fry's affection in Piero predates his discovery of post-impressionism, and may owe more to the influence of the Pre-Raphealites on British thought.  Though they never championed Piero, the Pre-Raphealites drew attention to the spiritual austerity of quattrocento painting, and few artists realize their ideals better than Piero.  Thus, we can find a path from the Pre-Raphealites to Fry, and then from Fry to modernism.  On this telling, Piero becomes a bridge that allows English art enthusiasts to develop an appetite for modern art.

New York is lucky to have a Piero exhibition right now at the Frick Collection.  7 works are displayed--the largest number ever grouped together in North America--including 6 panels from the Sant'Agostino altarpiece, which are normally scattered in different collections around the globe.  The alterpeice paintings include two austere portraits of a monk and a nun (above), as well as two full body portraits: a gorgeous St. John the Evangelist (owned by the Frick), and an imposing St. Augustine with a passion play decorating his robe.  Seeing these together is a special thrill.

The exhibit also includes a stunning Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Angels.  Like much of Piero's work, it can be described as movingly still.  The figures are erect and calm.  Their faces are classical, mask-like, and composed.  Most are looking inward, the Madonna's eyes are downcast and Luinesque, but the figure on the right looks out at the viewer, while pointing to the Christ child.  These angels lack the drama that is so characteristic of High Renaissance art, and this gives them a quiet humanism that is more affecting than works by many of Piero's successors.  The Virgin here has a quiet nobility.  She is like an ancient stone goddess, securely perched in the center of the canvas.  Piero's Mary paintings are among the best in the history of art.  Two others, both highly unusual, are reproduced for comparison to below.

All three Mary paintings have Mary at the center, towering comfortingly above the other figures.  The Mary exhibited at the Frick also exemplifies the trait for which Piero has become most known: his inventive use of geometry.   Piero wrote an important treatise on perspective, bringing that technique to a new level.  We see a hint of that in the upper right.  More strikingly, this painting, like many of Piero's most famous works makes extensive use of hidden formal regularities.

If one creates a square using the upper border of the panel, the midpoint will coincide with the outstretched hand of the Christ child (above left).  And if one creates a square using the architectural element in the background, its midpoint coincides with the hand of Mary, who is holding a rose (above right).

The upper-right quadrant of that inner square contains the heads of both Mary and Christ, and the crown of Christ's head falls at the midpoint (a device used in other Piero paintings).  Further decomposition of this square reveals many other precise alignments.  I created a grid to illustrate (above).  All four angels' faces have central points that line up with one of the nested verticals.  Two angels have v-neck garments that align with  verticals, and their robes also align.  Christ's and Mary's legs alight with other verticals.  The head's of christ and two angels align with one horizontal line, and that same line intersects the hairline of the other two angels.  The horizontal below that touches all of their chins.  The next horizontal hits the base of Christ's art and the base of the aforementioned v-necks.  The one below that intersects with Christ's knees as well as the belts of the two angels that flank either side of the panel.  Below that, a horizontal catches the hemlines of those two angels along with Mary's knee and Christ's foot.  These are just a few of the hidden geometrical coincidences that contribute to the painting's sense of harmony.  Highly formal but never cold, Piero's geometry is humanizing.

To fully appreciate Piero's poetic humanism, one need only consider his two most distinguished pupils. First consider the above painting by Melozzo da Forlì.  It has Piero's stillness and it takes his use of perspective to a new level.  But it utterly lacks the gentility of Piero's lines, his touching facial expressions, and his subtle palette.  Piero's other distinguished student is Luca Signorelli, famous for complex compositions with many interlocked figures.  For comparison, look at Signorelli's Last Judgment in comparison to the most figurally complex Piero that I know, The Battle of Heraclius and Chosroes.  Even in battle, there is a stillness to Piero's figures.  Signorelli's are highly theatrical in comparison.  There is hardly a vertical body in the painting. 

For a final comparison, consider this Signorelli Flagellation in comparison the Piero's treatment of the same theme (which is just a detail from the background of a larger composition).

Seeing these side by side it is hard not to think, with the Pre-Raphaelites, that the Renaissance took a wrong turn after Piero.  The serenity and dignity of his work was replaced by much cartoonish melodrama.  Signorelli is magnificent, to be sure, but his embellishments signal the loss of something very special, something that is present in much medieval art but gets lost as painting became more ostentatious.  Ironically, the High Renaissance painters are regarded as humanists, but Piero's work makes Michaelangelo and Titian look vulgar.  In this light, Piero's great contribution is not the he pre-figured modernism, but that he is pre-modern.  He gives us noble human archetypes at a moment just before humanity arrogantly asserted itself as the measure of all things.