Lamentation (The Mourning of Christ)
One of Giotto’s frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. The people truly grieve: they bend, stretch out their arms, weep. Here painting begins to leave behind the stiff figures of the Middle Ages.
Follow the ridge of rock as a diagonal down towards Christ’s face – the composition guides the eye.
The frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua were commissioned by Enrico Scrovegni, a wealthy merchant and banker. His father Reginaldo had been notorious for usury, and Dante placed him among the usurers in Hell in the Divine Comedy. The chapel has often been interpreted as Enrico’s attempt to atone for his family’s sins, but that is an interpretation and not something the sources state outright. The chapel was consecrated in 1305, and Giotto painted the frescoes in the preceding years.
Giotto covered almost the entire interior of the chapel with images. In rows along the walls he told the story of Mary’s parents Joachim and Anne, of the life of Mary and of Christ. The ceiling is deep blue with golden stars. On the wall by the exit is the Last Judgement, in which Enrico Scrovegni himself kneels and offers a model of the chapel. The Lamentation belongs to the Passion scenes in the lowest row.
In the Lamentation Christ’s dead body lies on the ground at the lower left. Mary holds his head close to hers and gazes into his face. Mary Magdalene sits at his feet. John leans forward and flings his arms back in despair. In the foreground sit two figures with their backs to us. They are completely wrapped in their cloaks and make us feel as if we ourselves are sitting in the circle of mourners.
Above, ten small angels fill the sky. They twist, tear at their faces and stretch out their arms, each angel with its own gesture of grief. On the rock to the right stands a bare tree. It has often been interpreted as the Tree of Knowledge from Paradise, which withered at the Fall, but the interpretation is not certain.
The composition is built around the edge of the rock, which cuts diagonally down towards Christ and Mary. The image has its centre of gravity low and to one side, which was unusual for the time. The figures have weight and volume, and their garments fall in broad folds. The faces express grief in different ways, and the gestures tell the story without text.
Giotto worked in true fresco, in which the paint is applied to wet lime plaster and bonds as the plaster dries. He painted one section at a time, a so-called giornata. The blue of the sky, however, was applied to dry plaster and has therefore partly flaked off. The chapel was extensively restored in 2001–2002. Today visitors must first wait in an anteroom that stabilises the humidity, and the time inside the chapel is limited.
Giotto was already regarded by his contemporaries as an innovator. Dante wrote that Giotto had taken over Cimabue’s glory as the foremost painter. With his solid, emotionally charged figures Giotto laid the foundations of Renaissance painting. Since 2021 the chapel has been part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site together with Padua’s other 14th-century frescoes.