Giotto frescoes almost the entire inner surface…

Giotto frescoes almost the entire inner surface of the Arena Chapel of Padua for the wealthy Enrico Scrovegni, whom Giotto portrays at the bottom of a depiction of the Last Judgment covering the entrance wall, showing the donor presenting the chapel, in the form of a model, to the Virgin.

Completed round 1305, three ranges of paintings on the other walls dramatically narrate the life of the Virgin and of Christ.

Giotto arranges his subjects across the surface of each scene and within a shallow stage-like space to attain a climactic visual focus.

In his famous scene of the “Lamentation,” somber, block-like figures surround the body of Christ within the space while all the painting’s secondary elements—glances and gestures and even the diagonal line of the hill—direct the viewers’ gaze to Mary’s embrace of the dead Jesus.

In these frescoes, Giotto introduces a psychology of relationships in his representation of human facial and body movements, returning the pictorial depth and narrative interest of classical art to the painting of murals.