Lamentation (The Mourning of Christ)
Giotto
GIOTTO, c1305. FRESCO.
Across the gulf of two eras, Giotto built a bridge. Out of the Byzantine tradition of flat, sharp and highly decorated art, he launched a revolution from a single building, armed with wet plaster, paint and a brush. That building was the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, and over two years Giotto painted a biblical narrative in immense frescoes that would inform the future of painting. Widely considered the father of the Renaissance, it is his work in Padua that warrants the claim. Here, death, mourning and resurrection as played out in a single scene. A Byzantine influence is clear: the gold halos that adorn the figures, moments of angularity in the faces and the decorative borders that surrounds it. Yet compositionally, Giotto was doing something radically new. The overlapping figures creating a sense of depth, the rising path that balances the work in two, the open display of emotion – all of these were to become trademarks of Renaissance painting but in 1305 it was miraculous. Giotto literally added a new dimension to painting, transforming flat planes into something that could represent the three-dimensional world. But he also added the dimension of emotion, and paintings became vehicles for expression and catharsis under his legacy.