Barren metal and the fruitful womb: the program of Giotto's Arena Chapel in Padua

Unde fit quidam partus cum denarius ex denario crescit. (Thus, a kind of birth takes place when money grows from [other] money.) - Thomas Aquinas, In VIII libros Politicorum expositio(1)

Quod concepisti parturies. (What you have conceived, you will bear.) - Meditationes Vitae Christi(2)

A network of meaning surrounds the viewer who stands at the center of the Arena Chapel. Above the chancel arch, God the Father dispatches Gabriel to the Annunciation - the beginning of redemption [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED]. Behind us, on the west wall, the Last Judgment [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED] brings divine intention to its cosmic closure. Facing the altar, we move clockwise through the stories in the nave frescoes, their strong narratives imitating the medieval conception of history, the movement of God's will through time. Above us in a starry azure vault, eternity looks down on the productions of time. Each wall of the chapel offers the viewer a series of paired antithetical images. On the dado, personifications of Virtues on the south wall oppose Vices on the north wall. The monumental Last Judgment on the west wall is itself a confrontation of opposites: Christ, radiant and lofty, versus Satan, in the shadowy depths; below Christ, the elect to his right versus the damned to his left; the devoutly kneeling patron, Enrico Scrovegni, versus the hanged and eviscerated traitor Judas. This pictorial microcosm bespeaks a consistency and symmetry comparable to Dante's Divine Comedy.

It is, then, all the more surprising when, standing in that central vantage point, one confronts the most provocative of these formal arrangements. On the east wall, on either side of the altar, are three pairs of frescoes flanking the chancel arch (just below the central image of God the Father dispatching Gabriel to Mary). Little effort is required to relate two of these pairs; in the highest pair, Gabriel and the Virgin Mary face each other across the divide of the chancel (thus bridging the gap by their mutual gaze); in the lowest pair, two illusionistic chambers share the same vantage point.(3) But between these is a pair whose relatedness is, to say the least, problematic, if not a startling anomaly in this chapel's system of meanings: Why juxtapose the Pact of Judas and the Visitation in such a prominent position on either side of the chancel arch? The very attention given to these two themes is curious, for neither subject figures conspicuously in late medieval Italian art; further, the thematic connection between the two is far from obvious. Moreover, unlike the Gabriel/Mary pair above, or the doubled chambers below, this pair does not bridge the chancel gap but sustains it, employs the gap as part of its meaning. Here the figures with the greatest visual interest (Judas and the high priest; Mary and Elizabeth) are farthest from the architectural center; indeed, attendant figures insist on this separation with their backs to the arch. Surely, this pair of frescoes represents a coincidentia oppositorum, a confrontation of meaningful opposites - but what are the meanings of this opposition? The vast literature on Giotto's work in the Arena Chapel has all but overlooked the interpretive possibilities of this antithetical pairing. Our investigation seeks to ground the opposition of Judas and Mary in a cultural understanding - the redemptive power of Mary's womb as counterpoise to what was then considered the sterility of ill-gotten gains - and in the context of the Scrovegni family history.

Giotto's fresco cycle, commissioned by Enrico Scrovegni early in the fourteenth century, is surely one of the most thoroughly studied monuments in the history of art.(4) The building was intended to be a small private chapel, for Enrico, "his wife, his mother, and his family," according to an early document; it was also to be Enrico's burial place.(5) Enrico purchased the land for the chapel and the family palace in 1300; the chapel was dedicated on the feast of the Annunciation, March 25, 1303.(6) The Annunciation had for some time been associated with the location; an earlier church, known as S. Maria Annunziata, may have occupied the site, and a play of the Annunciation had been enacted there at least since 1278. However, the Scrovegni Chapel became known as S. Maria della Carita: thus Enrico referred to it in his will, as did Pope Benedict XI in a document of 1304.(7)

The meaning of the chapel's fresco program has generated much discussion. Many scholars today accept the argument, most fully advanced by Ursula Schlegel, that Enrico had the chapel built and decorated to expiate the sin of usury, through which his father, Reginaldo, had amassed a fortune.(8) As Schlegel observes, the program includes a number of unusual features that point to a preoccupation with ill-gotten gains. Most important is the prominence of Judas - both on the chancel wall, where he confers with the high priests and grasps his money bag, and in the Last Judgment. As she notes, in this fresco the connection between greed and damnation is explicit: several of the damned, hanging like Judas, are suspended by the strings of their money bags tied around their necks. Several scholars have supported Schlegel's argument, adding that a third scene, the Expulsion of the Merchants from the Temple, also reveals a concern with the family's dubiously acquired wealth.(9) This subject is almost as uncommon in medieval Italian art as the Pact of Judas, which, significantly, adjoins it on the north wall.