One of my favorite places on earth is in Padua, Italy.
Scrovengi Chapel, also called the “Arena Chapel” (thanks to the remains of a Roman arena that nudge up next to one side of the building), was the project of a wealthy Paduan banker, Enrico degli Scrovegni, who began constructing the building in 1300 to complement the family palazzo he was going to build on the same site.
Every wealthy family had a chapel, and this one was by no means of ostentatious size or glittering magnificence.
What makes the Scrovegni Chapel so compelling and so mind-blowingly beautiful are the frescoes that cover the inside of the chapel. Scrovegni commissioned famed – and young – Florentine painter Giotto di Bondone to render the artwork.
Giotto is a wonderful story in his own right, having been discovered almost by accident. When I first heard this story from my Paduan almost-DIL, I was charmed to death.
…In his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects Vasari states that Giotto was a shepherd boy, a merry and intelligent child who was loved by all who knew him. The great Florentine painter Cimabue discovered Giotto drawing pictures of his sheep on a rock. They were so lifelike that Cimabue approached Giotto and asked if he could take him on as an apprentice.[9] Cimabue was one of the two most highly renowned painters of Tuscany, the other being Duccio, who worked mainly in Siena. Vasari recounts a number of such stories about Giotto’s skill as a young artist. He tells of one occasion when Cimabue was absent from the workshop, and Giotto painted a remarkably lifelike fly on a face in a painting of Cimabue. When Cimabue returned, he tried several times to brush the fly off.
It is those life-like qualities – the emotions so visible on faces – that broke new ground in Medieval art when Giotto began work on the chapel’s frescos in 1303. Prior to this, what many consider his most influential work, portraits were stylized and stiff.
Giotto’s faces speak to you – you can see anger, concern, or tenderness in eyes and expressions, and even the animals look alive.
Scrovegni Chapel’s theme is ‘Salvation’, and the chapel is dedicated to the Annunciation and the Virgin of Charity. There are pictorial panels dedicated to the cycles in the Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary and The Life of Christ.
The first time I was blessed to enter the chapel was a cold, rainy November night. We’d sat through the introductory video in the anteroom attached to the chapel. Everything is sealed for protection against outside air and to keep the damp from intruding on the fragile interior. Tours have a set number of participants and are limited to fifteen minutes each.
When the doors unsealed and slid open for our group, my DIL had already made sure I would be first in line.
“I wanted you to have it to yourself for a second at night, “she said.
I will forever love her for that second by myself in such a place of beauty and profound spiritualness.
The beauty was overwhelming and the intensity of it smacked me so hard.
The blues are so deep you could dive into them. On the barrel ceiling, stars of gold glittered in the lamplight across a Heavens decorated with medallions of saints and Jesus at its center.
High on the wall, as I looked at story panel after panel, there was the manger, with angels joyful above it, the farm beasts all settled in peacefully about the stall.
There was Mary, resting on the straw bed, and she was tenderly holding the Christ child as if holding a miracle.
Her child.
I saw Mary’s face as she held her precious baby boy…and I cried.
That deep, abiding, all-encompassing love in her serene, beautiful face.
And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.
And this [shall be] a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
The picture I took that night has meant Christmas to me ever since.
I wanted to share it with you all and wish you, from the bottom of my heart, the warmest, most love-filled, blessed Christmas possible.
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will towards men.
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