Giotto, Arena (Scrovegni) Chapel (part 4) Video Lecture - Humanities/Arts

(piano playing)
Dr. Zucker: Below the
Passion scene is even
more painting.
There are these marvelous
representations of
virtues and vices, that is expressions of
good and evil.
Dr. Harris: We're looking
at the figure of Envy.
Dr. Zucker: It's one
of my favorite figures.
Dr. Harris: Here is a
figure in profile engulfed
in flames, clutching a bag.
Dr. Zucker: But reaching
with her other hand
for something she does not have,
something that she wants.
Dr. Harris: She's not
content with what she has,
she wants more.
Dr. Zucker: She's got huge ears.
It's as if every sense
is attuned to what she
does not have.
Dr. Harris: We see
emerging from her mouth,
a snake, who moves toward her eyes.
Dr. Zucker: That's right,
it doubles back on itself
because it is what she
sees that bites her,
in a sense.
Dr. Harris: We have virtues and vices here
because these are the good and evil that
we confront, all of us, in our lives
and these are the things
that decide at the day
of Judgement we go to Heaven or Hell.
Dr. Zucker: They are,
in a sense, abstractions
of the ideas that are
told in the stories above.
The final virtue, as we
move towards the exit
of the Chapel is Hope and
she is reaching upward,
floating, a classicized figure.
Dr. Harris: And she's winged like an Angel
and is lifted up toward
a figure on the upper
right who's handing her a crown.
Dr. Zucker: So, Hope,
because she is in the corner
is looking up towards The Last Judgement
and is of the same scale.
Her body is in the same diagonal position
as the elect in the bottom left corner.
Dr. Harris: We see the elect,
many of them with their
hands in positions of prayer looking up
towards the enormous figure of Christ,
the largest figure in this Chapel.
Dr. Zucker: We should
say that the elect are
the blessed, that is
these are people that are
going to Heaven.
You'll see that they
are actually accompanied
by Angel's that look so caring and gentle.
They're shepherding
these people into Heaven.
If you look carefully you
can see that there feet
are not on the ground,
they're actually levitating
slightly, they're rising up.
Dr. Harris: There's benevolent, generous
expressions on the face
of those Angel's as they
look at all of these
individuals who've made the
choices in their lives that have lead them
to this moment of being blessed.
Dr. Zucker: The choices
that are laid out for us
in the virtues and vices
in the bottom panels.
Just below the elect you
can see that there are
what seem to be children,
naked, coming out of
coffins, out of tombs.
Those nude figures are
meant to represent the souls
that are to be judged by Christ,
who as you said, sits in the middle.
He sits here as Judge to
judge those souls that
are being wakened from
the dead to determine
whether or not they are blessed
and get to go to Heaven
or if they're going to end
up on the right side of
this painting in Hell.
Dr. Harris: This follows
very standard iconography
or standard composition
of The Last Judgement
with the blessed, those
who are going to Heaven
on Christ's right and the damned below
on Christ's left.
Just either side of Christ, though,
that division of left
and right doesn't happen.
Dr. Zucker: That's because this is Heaven.
Dr. Harris: There we see accord of Saint's
and around that mandorla,
that sort of fully body
halo around Christ we see
Angel's blowing trumpets.
Dr. Zucker: These are
images that come right out
of the Apocalypse, the
Gospel according to John.
Dr. Harris: The book of Revelation.
Dr. Zucker: We have the
Angel's announcing the
end of time.
We have Angel's above
them rolling up the sky
as if it were a scroll.
These are images that we generally see in
Last Judgement's because
they are in the text
of the Bible.
Dr. Harris: The scene of
Hell on the lower right
with a large blue figure that is meant
to represent Satan,
surrounding him are souls
being tortured in Hell.
Dr. Zucker: A lot of
this imagery is inspired,
I think, indirectly by the work of Dante
who had not so long ago,
written the Divine Comedy,
which was extremely popular,
and he describes the landscape of Hell.
Dr. Harris: He equates
the punishments of Hell
with the different kinds of sins that
people committed.
So, in The Last Judgement
that we're looking at
and because the patron here was concerned
with the send of usury,
we see usurer's featured
and they're being hung
with the bags of money
on the ropes that they're hanging from.
Dr. Zucker: Right, usury
is requiring interest for
when you lend money.
It's basically just the act of banking
and that was a mortal sin.
In fact, Dante speaks
at great length about
the usurer's who have their moneybags
hanging from their necks
and are in one of the
lowest of the circles of Hell.
Below the usurer's you
can actually make out a
specific individual, also
hanged, this is Judas,
the Disciple that betrays Christ.
Dr. Harris: So anyone
leaving the Chapel from
this exit would look up at this scene of
The Last Judgement, up
at the cross carried by
two Angel's.
Perhaps they would
notice that figure that I
just noticed, a figure behind the cross,
sort of grasping it for dear life.
And would have also looked up
and have seen Enrico Scrovegni, himself,
the patron offering this
Chapel to the three Mary's.
Dr. Zucker: As the
public would have walked
outside after a sermon,
after mass perhaps,
they would be reminded
right before they walk
back into the world, the world of desire,
the world of sin, that
the sacrifice that Christ
had made, that story that had unfolded in
this Chapel comes down
to decisions that they
need to make in their own life.
This is in a sense a kind of last reminder
before you walk out, to take
these stories seriously.
Dr. Harris: Giotto makes
it very easy for us
to do that by painting
these figures in their
humanity, by making the narrative so easy
and clear to read and
by making something so
beautiful; recognized
for its beauty even when
it was first painted.
Dr. Zucker: That's right,
even in its own day.
(piano playing)