Scrovegni Chapel Restoration and Frescoes

Restoration and Environmental Interventions

  • The 1976 Friuli earthquake caused the reopening of old lesions in the Scrovegni Chapel (Cappella degli Scrovegni).
  • The Ministry of Cultural Heritage entrusted the Central Institute for Restoration (Istituto Centrale del Restauro) with the task of verifying the conditions of Giotto's cycle of frescoes.
  • An investigation in 1979 found that pollution, causing saline efflorescence, was the primary cause of the paintings' degradation. Measures were needed to block or limit pollutants from entering the building and to prevent condensation inside.
  • In the mid-1980s, passive interventions were implemented to make the chapel's environment more suitable for the conservation of the mural decorations. These included:
    • Closing the main door in the façade.
    • Reopening the side entrance at the back of the left wall.
    • Constructing a multi-purpose compartment with a filtering function between the interior and exterior of the chapel, known as the equipped technological body.

Restoration and Maintenance

  • The last restoration of the paintings was carried out by the Central Institute for Restoration from 2000 to 2002, in agreement with the Municipality of Padua and the Superintendence for Artistic and Historical Heritage.
  • An agreement was announced between the Municipality of Padua and the ICR for continuous monitoring and maintenance.
  • The painted surfaces are closely monitored annually based on this protocol.
  • In 2017, an innovative lighting system was implemented by Guzzini, based on LEDs and managed by an intelligent system. This system adapts artificial light to variations in natural light, optimizing the perception of colors.

History and Commissioning of the Chapel

  • The chapel contains masterpieces of painting history.
  • On February 6, 1300, Enrico Scrovegni, a wealthy Paduan banker, purchased the area of the ancient Roman arena and built a grand palace connected to a chapel. The chapel was intended as a private oratory and a burial monument for his family.
  • Enrico commissioned Giovanni Pisano to sculpt a white marble Madonna with child between two angels and Giotto di Bondone to create frescoes.
  • Enrico aspired to a political role commensurate with his economic power, but his plans failed. He died in exile on the Venetian island of Burano in 1336 and is buried in the chapel with his second wife, Iacopina D'Este.
  • In the 1330s, the apse area was structurally modified, resulting in the loss of frescoes that Giotto had executed in that space.
  • An anonymous painter, the Maestro del Coro Skrovegni, was commissioned to repaint the apse, possibly as a result of a dispute with the friars.
  • The complex survived until 1827, when the palace was demolished. The chapel faced risks before becoming the property of the Municipality of Padua in 1981.
  • Giotto began his work at age 36, having worked in Florence, Rome, and primarily in Franciscan contexts in Assisi, Rimini, and Padua itself, commissioned by the friars of Sant'Antonio.
  • The program for the frescoes was entrusted to a theologian from the nearby Convent of the Eremitani, identified as Friar Alberto da Padova, who completed his work by 1328.

Giotto's Artistic Innovations

  • Giotto acknowledges the role of Mary, symbolically placing it on her shoulders.
  • In the climate of the first Jubilee in history (1300), Giotto paints the reconciliation of God with humanity and the path to be followed to hope for salvation.
  • Giotto spent nearly two years working on the frescoes, assisted by a team of collaborators.
  • Giotto departs from the hieratic figures of Byzantine art, humanizing the divine, introducing realism, and highlighting emotions and passions in the faces and gestures.
  • He incorporates references to planes and depths, opening the way to modern painting with innovative colors and graphic skill.
  • Giotto sculpts with light and color. In medieval symbology, color held religious significance: blue indicates the wisdom of God, red represents minor virtues, pink represents major virtues, and white is the color of God.

Fresco Cycle Narrative

  • The narrative begins in the lunette above the triumphal arch, where God commands the Archangel Gabriel to initiate the redemption of humanity. The story continues along the walls of the nave in three superimposed registers that descend in a spiral.
  • The destination is the first recognition of the Messiah's presence and the betrayal by Judas, which initiates the Passion and death of Jesus.
  • In the upper register of the south wall, the angel reveals to Joachim and Anne that their marriage, previously sterile, will be blessed by the birth of a daughter who will inspire admiration for all centuries.
  • In the meeting at the Golden Gate of Jerusalem, the profiles of the spouses merge in a true kiss, considered the first in the history of art.
  • The narrative resumes in the upper register of the north wall with the stories of Mary, including her birth, presentation at the temple, the competition among suitors, her marriage to Joseph, and the procession.

Key Scenes and Iconography

  • The Annunciation presents an unprecedented iconography. Mary is absorbed in contemplation on a divine message that Gabriel has just communicated to her.
  • The second register of the wall includes the presentation at the Temple. The Flight into Egypt, and the Massacre of the Innocents complete the sequence of Jesus' childhood.
  • The narrative pathos culminates in the torment of the mothers, depicted in a discomposed accumulation of corpses in which the technique of foreshortening reaches unprecedented results.
  • In the scene of the Baptism, the angels offer Jesus the red tunic embroidered in gold, and for the first time, the blue mantle of divine wisdom.
  • The miracles of the Wedding at Cana and the Resurrection of Lazarus: the water that becomes wine represents the symbolic passage to the New Testament, while Lazarus resurrected is a symbol of redeemed humanity.

Passion and Resurrection

  • The story of the Passion begins on Palm Sunday, with Giotto representing his humble and victorious patience.
  • The ascent to Calvary is a metaphor for ascension, a sense of isolation, loneliness, and emptiness. Jesus on the cross, his body white, enveloped in light, cuts the scene in two, separating the group of the grieving from that of the soldiers and the people.
  • Jesus has risen from the sepulcher and one says inside Do not hold me back says May the ascension of Jesus to heaven concludes the presence of God among men.
  • Christ ascends with perfect momentum, wrapped in an almond of light. The robe slides slightly the arms outstretched upward already beyond the frame with the tips of the fingers.

Vices and Virtues

  • The descent of the Holy Spirit concludes the revelation and initiates the offering of the present. The seventh day, the time that separates us from the Final Judgement and that becomes the path of the fourth register, that of vices and virtues, each of us is called to the choice of good or evil. It is the concept of free will.
  • In the allegories of vices and virtues, Giotto exalts his creative genius. Each vice would prevent one from continuing on the path of good, if the therapeutic effect of the opposite virtue did not intervene: foolishness is healed by prudence, inconstancy by fortitude, anger by temperance, injustice by justice, and so on, up to aerial hope that cures the negativity of despair.
  • Of particular interest is the pair of envy and charity. Envy disregards the fundamental commandment of Christianity: Love one another. Among the components of envy is avarice, symbolized by the bag of money that the old woman holds.

Final Judgement

  • Christ the judge. On either side, the apostles seated on thrones create a plane that cuts the scene horizontally.
  • Below to the left, two processions of chosen ascend towards paradise, while to the right, the horror of hell is flung open: a river of fire drags downwards with the violence of a vortex, the damned, naked, clung to and tormented by shaggy and horrid devils. A gigantic monster dominates the scene.
  • Male and female nudes are represented with crude realism. Giotto paints the medieval conception of hell, a place of punishments, tortures, and torments.
  • Many religious figures fill it. And there is also a mysterious Pope.
  • The Final Judgment closes the time of the world. Two angels are rolling up the sky, and behind them, one can glimpse the gates of celestial Jerusalem. The dimension of the eternal opens. The eighth day, represented symbolically by this gesture, calls us to live a complex experience in an extraordinary and unique place, submerging us in the spirituality of a world that yearns for justice and peace, inviting us to meditate on our essence, calling us to a sense of responsibility, and indicating the care of…