Giotto in Padua

In February, we made a trip to Rome in celebration of our 25^th anniversary. To celebrate my  60^th birthday, I requested a trip to Venice, a city I never imagined I’d have a chance to visit and of which I had few mental images.

Venice has the advantage of being within driving distance of Salzburg, something over five hours. Rather than make the whole journey in a day, we booked four nights in Venice, and then, working backwards, I booked a night in Sirmione, one of dozens of towns and villages that dot the shores of Lago di Garda, the large Alpine lake in the north of Italy, and another night in Padua, which lies less than a hour west of Venice. I had left one night open, the last night of the week and, at the urging of our sister-in-law, Moyra, we decided to spend it in Verona on our return journey.

Venice, Padua and Verona are cities associated in my mind with the plays of Shakespeare, with literature I haven’t necessarily read, and with the ghosts of art history lectures decades ago. It was then I fell in love with medieval and early Renaissance Western art with little expectation I would ever see the masterpieces in situ.

So it was with taut nerves and hard-to-contain excitement that I waited with about twenty others to be admitted to the Cappella degli Scrovegni in Padua to see the cycle of frescoes painted by Giotto for the ruling family of Padua in their private chapel. Depicting scenes from the life of Mary, mother of Jesus, from the life of Anne, her mother, and from the life of Christ, the cycle was completed in 1305. It is considered to be one of the masterpieces of Western art. 

An early master, Giotto bridges the divide between the stiffer, hierarchical figures painted against gold ground that mark medieval work and the opening up of perspective with naturalistic settings and more lifelike figures that heralded the coming of the Renaissance. Put plainly, he was one of the artists who opened our eyes so we could see the world differently.

The high, round vault of the chapel in Padua is painted deep blue with a regular pattern of gold stars. Across the ceiling and down the walls patterned bands of colour divide the space into panels, each of which frames a different scene from Mary’s life, so the whole is viewed like a picture book. They are lovely; the colours, both rich and soft, are varied. Giotto shows technical skill, too. The modelling of the drapery carefully rendered to indicate the solidity of the flesh, bone and muscle beneath. Backgrounds are simple but there is early use of perspective, so the depth of a scene in shown. Decorative borders under some of the panels are painted with such skill that they appear as if carved from wall.

But what draws one to the paintings is the humanness of the figures. Faces are beautiful and expressive. Tears stream down the mothers’ faces in the scene depicting the massacre of the innocents. The faces of Mary, her companions and John the Baptist are anguished as they cradle the body of the dead Christ, disposed from the cross. Over their heads, tiny angels mourn, arms spread in agony or clutched to their faces. In these faces, the artist captures vulnerability, volatility, softness and beauty.

Giotto, The Lamentation, Cappella degli Scrovegni, Padua.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Still, Giotto’s naturalism is not the realism of the later Renaissance and Baroque. The figures are charming and lifelike in the way of beautifully drawn picture book. They lack the full physicality and complete individualisation of painting that would follow in later centuries. However, like a child, I wanted to study every small detail, to hold them in my mind, to somehow own them though my first-hand experience of them. I love the translucence of the water that laps around Jesus’ legs as he stands in the Sea of Galilee while John baptises him. I love the delicately overlapping feathers in the angels’ wings and the softness of the women’s faces. Since I first was introduced to these works, in slides and four-colour pictures over thirty years ago, I have wanted to be in their presence.

Giotto, The Kiss of Judas, Cappella degli Scrovegni, Padua.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Frescoes are created by mixing pigment in plaster that is painted onto the surface of a wall, so they are chemically bound to it. This gives them durability, but they can be damaged by exposure to the elements, in particular salt. The frescos of Giotto in Padua are still in place more than seven hundred years – nearly three-quarters of a millennium – after they were created. Yet they have suffered some damage; to protect them from the effects of humidity caused by respiration, only twenty-five people at one time are admitted, and then for only fifteen minutes. All too soon for me, our fifteen minutes were up, and we were escorted out, passing on our way the next group of twenty-five waiting to be ushered in.

So Himself and I came out of the dim chapel into the heat and glare of a May afternoon in Padua. Before us stretched the week in Venice, where we would see many more landmark paintings and many more masterpieces of art. Seeing the Giotto frescoes was but one dream fulfilled. I can’t hold them in memory as acutely as I would like: to write this, I referred to images online, pale imitations of the originals that can only hint at their power.

I am lucky to have had the chance to worship at their shrine, inconceivably so. Little by little, I am learning to see the world differently.

Light

Three and a half years ago, I left Southern California willingly, even eagerly, happy to embrace the softer, as I thought, purer light of the northern latitudes, pleased to leave  behind the brittle glare of a too-harsh sun. I longed for the more subtle palette of colours under the pale blue sky, the silver mists hanging over fields of every shade of green, the wisps of cloud caught on the low-slung, heath-covered hills of Tipperary. Though I cherished the jagged Santa Monica Mountains as the sun gilded them rose-gold at sunset, I didn’t mind leaving behind the torpor of late August, with its shimmers of heat hovering over softened asphalt.

Here in Salzburg, light and colour are closer that of Ireland. I’ve grown used to its subtleties through the changing seasons. A softer, pastel blue sky cushioned with thick full clouds has become the norm.

So it was with a jolt of recognition that Himself and I stood on Via Adda in Rome last week, gaping at a sky of brilliant blue, a blue I’ll call cerulean, a seductive deep rich blue. Its depth of colour spread from horizon to horizon, unmoderated by clouds. It was a sky the breadth and depth of which we were used to seeing over Los Angeles.

Which only makes sense. The Los Angeles region shares with Rome a Mediterranean climate and ecosystem. Standing on the street in Rome, we felt at home. Across from us, deep green foliage tumbled over a tall mottled sienna-coloured wall. Around us, trees filled with oranges and lemons grew even more profusely, it seemed, than in our former California neighbourhood.

We were in Rome to celebrate our 25^th anniversary, the first visit for each of us. Though I had immersed myself in reading Roman history and the excellent Blue Guide to Rome, I had formed only vague impressions of what to expect. As it turned out, the reality was overwhelming, simultaneously familiar and foreign. We were blessed by mild temperatures—in the mid-teens—clear skies and sunny days. In the evenings, a sliver of the new moon gradually waxed, the Cheshire cat’s smile growing brighter against the luminous violet-blue night as the week progressed.

We tramped sidewalks and steps, roamed the Forum and the Coliseum, climbed the dome of St Peter’s, from which we stood looking down into the luxury of the hidden Vatican estate. We lost ourselves in the collections of the Capitoline and Massimo and in the crowds surging up Via del Corso on the Sunday evening darkness, shops still open.

There was an element of pilgrimage as I came face to face with works I studied decades ago as an unworldly student of art history on the brick-built campus of UCLA. Last week I trembled as we waited to enter the Borghese Gallery at nine a.m., the first entrance allowed. As it happened, it was a quiet morning and, in my eagerness, I had positioned myself at the head of the small queue. So I led the procession up the stone steps, my eyes misting unaccountably as I climbed. So too did I spontaneously tear up as we entered St Peter’s and stood before the Pieta behind its sheltering glass. I don’t know why Michelangelo’s famous work had that effect on me; it isn’t my sentimental favourite in any way. Yet it was moving to be in its presence.

We sought out dozens of objects of adoration during the pilgrimage, many of them in churches: The mosaics in Santa Maria Maggiore; Michelangelo’s Moses in San Pietro in Vincoli; the frescoes ascribed to Giotto in Santa Maria d’Aracoeli; the Raphael fresco on a pier in shadowy nave. We tracked down as many Caravaggios as we could, going from church to church on increasing aching feet to do so. In most of the churches, we pushed through crowds to see them. However, in Sant’Angostino, we stood in awe before perhaps the loveliest Caravaggio we saw, Madonna di Loreto, virtually alone.

I stood with binoculars picking out the details on Trajan’s column, dimly recalling lectures in Roman art from all those years ago. Also brought back to consciousness was the astonishing dome of the Pantheon, and the profusion of Bernini sculptures throughout the city.

So we gorged on art, seeing works I had waited most of a lifetime to see in person, many of which Himself was encountering for the first time. But though we can take away those images in memory, as well as in reproductions, they do not make up the magic of a visit to Rome.

Even without visiting a single gallery or museum, without wearing ourselves out trying to put art and history into context—which we do because we’re both temperamentally disposed to—we would have loved Rome for its freshness of spirit and sophistication. I loved the swagger of Rome’s men and women, the way they walked confidently, heads high, feet placed securely. I loved the audacity of style of dress. I loved the voluble, loud, expressive, incessant chatter heard everywhere—in the street, on buses, in restaurants and shops, the hallways of museums, coming from doorways—everywhere. On a crowded tramcar, a someone asked a question one day, evidently enquiring about the right stop. Everyone—all apparently strangers to the man and to each other—joined a heated conversation that continued after he got off. That would not happen here in Salzburg, nor in Ireland, nor, I venture, in Los Angeles.

We loved too the visual sophistication, the elegant motifs painted on the sides of villas and walls, the ceiling paintings and mosaics, the rich warm earth tones that the Mediterranean sun illuminates so brilliantly. After the grey stone buildings in the green Irish landscape and the more stolid wood-beamed architecture of the Austrian Alps, it was a delight to see warm brick and stucco enlivened by colour and embellished with swirling arabesques. Interiors everywhere were covered with murals, green poured out of window boxes, lemons and oranges glowed from the green foliage of trees seen over garden walls. The city seemed alive with colour and design.

We admired as well the Romans’ enthusiasm for eating out in the evening. We made the practice, after a couple of false starts, of going back to our hotel, away from the tourist centres, to rest briefly before going to a later dinner in nearby neighbourhood restaurants. It was only at 8 or 8:30, we noticed, they began to fill with Italians. When they did, how lively the dining rooms became. Clearly Romans take their food seriously, but even more important, it seemed, was the conversation and enjoyment of their companions. This became our night-time entertainment; there was no need to seek out a pub or club. Back at the hotel, exhausted by the day’s walking, I quickly fell asleep.

It was a wonderful week.

After 25 years of marriage, Himself and I have made some unorthodox compromises to deal with our differences. We both like window seats on airplanes, and my in-flight restlessness disturbs him. In consequence, when we can, we sit in different rows, each with our own window seat. So it was when we left Rome last Saturday, on a sunny, mild afternoon. I craned my neck into the window, rapt by the turquoise-green Mediterranean as the plane banked away from the airport. Realising my seatmate also wanted to see the view, I leaned back and looked sidelong as the green receded. Then the aircraft broke through the ceiling above. Below us, all was irregular white, a vast snow field of clouds. My seatmate turned back to his book and I to my magazine.

Just over an hour later, the captain was welcoming us to Munich. The temperature, he said, was three degrees. My seatmate and I looked at each other, eyes wide, rueful. Then we shrugged and laughed.

‘That’s why you go to Rome,’ I said, then turned again to look at the flat, grey light beyond the window.