Giottos Arena Chapel

Art

Giotto's fresco of Christ's nativity graces the walls of the Scrovegni Chapel, also known as the Arena Chapel because of its proximity to the ancient Roman structure in Padua. The fresco depicts Christ as an infant child, and his mother Mary holds him almost as if he were about to fall off the wooden bed upon which they both lay. Giotto places the infant Christ on the far left of the panel and yet the eye is drawn naturally to the swaddled baby because of deft use of linear composition. Its centerpiece is one of the corners of the wooden bed, and the bed's lines lead the eye naturally toward Christ and Mary, both of whom are haloed. Atop the bed, a choir of angels keeps watch over the baby of Bethlehem. The mood of the fresco is tense; the Virgin mother grasps her child, clings to him and gazes at him with a mixture of maternal love and fear. A sense of doom at Christ's inevitable fate pervades the scene, enhanced by the unexpected presence of a gray donkey the butts in below Jesus and Mary.

Nicola Pisano also depicts Christ's nativity on the Baptistry pulpit in Pisa. Unlike Giotto's nativity scene, Pisano's is a marble sculpture, and the different medium lends a different feel to the composition. In Pisano's nativity, the Virgin mother appears old, austere, and detached. She looks away from her infant child in a pose exactly opposite from that of Giotto's Mary who clings desperately to her fated infant. Pisano's Mary is also reclined but her looks off into the distance and not at Jesus. In fact, the baby Jesus floats in a space atop her outstretched body, wrapped tightly in what could just as easily be a sarcophagus as swaddling clothes. Mary's rigid restraint is coupled with the coffin-like imagery to portend Christ's death. The tension in Pisano's piece therefore accomplishes the same thematic goal as Giotto's desperate Mary who clings to her newborn. In contrast to Giotto's sparce composition, Pisano's marble relief is crowded, filled with attendants, angels, and manger animals and imparting a more chaotic tone than Giotto's nativity fresco.