Giotto's art and artistic legacy

Giotto's Kiss Of Judas

Giotto's depiction of the Kiss of Judas, on the wall of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, was painted in the early years of the fourteenth century -- it is a religious illustration, meant to gloss the moment in Christ's Passion depicted in three of the four synoptic Gospels (Matthew 26:47-50; Mark 14:43-45; Luke 22:47-48), wherein Judas Iscariot identifies Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, so that he may be arrested. Judas has decided to signal Christ's identity by kissing him warmly, and the "Judas kiss" has thus become extended as a kind of metaphor for the treacherous hypocrisy of a betrayer or an informant. The eye-catching central portion of the painting here depicts Judas, with his left arm extended and the scalloped folds of his bright orange cloak hanging down like a theatrical curtain: Judas' arm more or less eclipses most of Christ's body, so we see only Christ's head (with golden halo) staring Judas eye-to-eye in the kiss: a small portion of Christ's blue frock descends to the ground. Christ is bearded and seen in profile, with something of the aspect of a Byzantine icon: Judas is clean-shaven and has short curly brown hair. The traditional flame-red hair of Judas in popular iconography seems to be displaced here onto the vivid orange of the cloak, which ranges from baby-carrot to candied-yam depending on how the light plays upon its folds. The arresting centurions are garbed in the red and gold of the Roman army; to the left of Christ we can see a further element of the Gethsemane drama depicted simultaneously, as Saint Peter draws a knife (in the biblical account, a sword) to cut the ear of a servant. Peter's sweeping right arm provides a sort of mirror image of Judas' left -- although the depiction is mediated with a third figure, hooded and cloaked, who also extends his arm left in the same way as Judas. The three figures with arms and capes extended surround Christ, whose halo peeks out above so that we are invited to focus specifically on his face (just as Judas does). The coloration on the folds of all the garments in the painting is one of the chief ways Giotto indicates depth here -- in addition to making the closer figures slightly larger. Overall, though, the red and flame tones that mark virtually all of the cloaks and garments (save for the hooded figure in gunmetal grey) mimic the orange flames of the torches (depicted almost cartoonishly compared with the detailed realism of the faces) and are meant to give a sense of the strange lighting at work in the nighttime setting: presumably if the night sky were not so badly damaged in the fresco at present, the vivid coloration would stand out even further as an indication of torchlight.