Lecture 7: Giotto and the Arena Chapel—Part II
of the feast sipping from a large À agon with a dubious expression. His
corpulence repeats the shapes of the pots in front of him, emphasized by
decorative striations and the creases in his tunic.Following this scene is the Raising of Lazarus. Lazarus was the brother of
Mary Magdalen and Martha. Because he was sick, they asked Jesus to come
and cure him. By the time Jesus arrived, Lazarus had been dead and entombed
for four days. Jesus told Martha, in words that have become a central tenet of
the Christian faith: “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me,
though he die, yet shall he live, and whomever lives and believes in me shall
never die.” In the foreground, Lazarus’s two sisters prostrate themselves in
earnest belief in Jesus and his power to restore life. They are presented as
a uni¿ ed mass. The large sloping rock leads the
eye to Jesus and to his hand, which is above the
heads of Mary and Martha, isolated against blue
sky. The slope also simultaneously expands his
gesture—carrying the miraculous power from his
hand across the composition to Lazarus.Note the careful compositional balance of Jesus
on the left and the upright, still-shrouded Lazarus
at right. This painting is divided down the middle,
with Jesus, his disciples, and the sisters on the left
and those with Lazarus and the tomb at the right—
the division between life and death. Lazarus is
À anked by two large ¿ gures, a bearded man and a woman whose face is
covered. Behind her, another woman covers her nose with her veil, because,
as Martha says in St. John’s Gospel, “by this time he stinketh”—a reminder
of mortality, one that Giotto and most painters of this scene indicate by the
covering of noses.There is a striking man in green mediating between the groups, gesturing
toward Jesus while looking intently at Lazarus. In the right foreground,
two men are moving the marble slab that covered the vertical tomb behind
Lazarus, while the barren, rocky mountain behind sprouts green trees as
evidence of resurrection. In a memorable touch that is part of Giotto’s genius,The architecture
in the painting
is tilted so that
the ¿ gures can
be seen from the
center, conveying
a sense of space
and of volume.