Laura Jacobus

"This book concentrates on the first few years of the Arena Chapel’s existence, treating its subject as an integrated project involving art, architecture and viewer experience. This, argues Laura Jacobus, is how Giotto would have approached the task of designing the chapel and its frescoes: as a holistic entity.  Determining the nature of the original project is of primary importance for understanding the frescoes which decorate the chapel, and this is the first book to consider the building’s original functions, form and usage.  Doing so allows the author to propose a series of completely new interpretations of the frescoes, revealing them to be both more concerned with the mundane, and more spiritually profound, than has previously been understood.

Part I rigorously examines a wide variety of evidence in order to answer many of the questions surrounding the chapel’s history.  In the fullest biography of the chapel’s patron yet published, the author calls into question received opinion about his motivation for building the chapel.  Interpreting documentary material together with physical evidence found in the chapel itself, she proposes a new understanding of the chapel as a multi-functional social space, divided along lines of gender and social status, and intended for use by very different constituencies.  She also demonstrates that the chapel’s design and construction were dynamic processes subject to change over the course of just a few years, and that Giotto’s own involvement with the project fluctuated.  Reassessing workshop practices in the light of the recent restoration of the frescoes, she offers new insights into Giotto’s role as one of the founders of the western art tradition.  Most controversially, she proposes a radical reconstruction of Giotto’s original design of the Arena Chapel frescoes. 

Part II of the book turns to the interpretation of Giotto’s frescoes in the light of these discoveries.  The author adopts a number of different perspectives, always with the aim of recovering viewers’ experience of the chapel, and their potential understanding of the frescoes.  She highlights the ideological content of Giotto’s images, suggesting that the frescoes express the interests and insecurities of the new, entrepreneurial class to which both the artist and his patron belonged.  Far from being a source of fear and loathing, wealth is re-branded in the frescoes as a social good.  The manners and mores of the newly-rich are reflected and reinforced on the walls of the chapel, which show a world characterised by socially-harmonious inequality of the sexes and social estates.  In what is possibly the earliest programme of confraternal imagery yet to be discovered,  the Apostolate is presented as the idealised ‘mirror’ of a corrupt and elitist confraternity.  Yet there are also profound moral and spiritual lessons to be learned from the frescoes, which place every viewer within an unfolding history of human salvation and offer each one the hope of Heaven through the exercise of their own moral choice.

The book includes a wealth of illustrations, and valuable appendices of newly-discovered documents or newly-edited and translated sources, by Prof. Benjamin J. Kohl and Dr. Joseph Spooner.

In preparation. The book considers the cultural activity of the Scrovegni family from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, and the 'afterlife' of their chapel under their patronage and that of the confraternity which was based in it until the later fifteenth century.

... no. FP I0906, illustrated in E. Verheyen, The Palazzo del Te in Mantua (Baltimore 1977)), orJacopo Sansovino's drawing of the vault of the Tempio di Sibilla (Florence, Uffizi). ... 47b) Fig. 7 John Talman, designfor a royal apartment (Victoria and Albert Museum) Fig. ...

Courtesy literature shared common ideologies with medieval and renaissance narrative paintings, dramas and devotional literature. All had exemplary functions and all assumed a moral equivalence between outward behaviour and inner character. Their strictures were often, but not exclusively, applied to women. Looking at paintings in the light of these sources can illuminate their exemplary role in the lives of the people who saw them.

This paper was delivered at the Andrew Ladis Memorial Conference on Trecento Art, at Tulane University, 10-12th 2017, as a presetnations entitled 'Likeness and Peasants...' and has now been published in amended form as '"I, Porrina",a hyper-realistic portrait in the Collegiata of Casole d’Elsa' Art and Experience in Trecento Italy: Proceedings of the Andrew Ladis Memorial Conference in New Orleans, November 10-12, 2016 Vol 1, eds. Holly Flora, Sarah S. Wilkins (New York and Turnhout: Brepols 2018), 61-78 . It considers some outstanding questions surrounding a compelling statue in the Collegiata of Casole d’Elsa, which has only recently been identified as representing the local lord Porrina degli Albertini.  The statue has clear similarities with a statue of Enrico Scrovegni in Padua; both are freestanding portrait statues of laymen in niches accompanied by inscriptions; both are executed in hyper-realistic styles; and both are apparently without precedent.  What is their connection?  Where was the statue of Porrina originally placed, and what was its purpose?  When was it made and why was it moved? Did Porrina actually look like his statue, and, importantly, how does his image fit into a history of portraiture?  The paper proposes that the answers to these questions lie in the neighbouring Albertini family chapel, and in closer analysis of Porrina’s image and the inscription which accompanied it.

This is an accepted manuscript, with full text but lacking illustrations, of an article published by Taylor and Francis in The Art Bulletin on 26th August 2017, available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00043079.2017.1251814 . A podcast discussing the article is at  https://soundcloud.com/birkbeck-podcasts/facsimile-portraiture?in=birkbeck-podcasts/sets/birkbeck-voices. Close observation of two portraits shows that they are ‘facsimile portraits’, exploiting mechanical means of reproduction with the intention of capturing and recreating exact physical likeness.  The roles of the patron Enrico Scrovegni, the early humanist Albertino Mussato, and the anonymous artists are considered; the portraits express a particular historical consciousness arising in a specific cultural milieu.  This discovery challenges prevailing ideas about medieval concepts of likeness, and can prompt revision of accepted histories of portraiture.  Establishing a category of ‘facsimile portraiture’, and employing methods of close observation may also help to nuance historical understanding of portraiture in other periods.

Concerns the location and significance of a little-known statue which holds an important place in a history of realistic portraiture.  Argues that the statue of Enrico Scrovegni, now in the sacristy of the Arena Chapel (Cappella Scrovegni) in Padua, was created for a niche on the exterior of the building, where it projected aspects of the subject's public persona to the select audiences able to view it.

The paper explores the affective potential of sculptural groups and painted images of the Crucifixion, Deposition and Lamentation by considering the synaesthetic and performative relationships that existed between art and drama in the context of liturgy.

Tracks the 'rise and fall' of a form of architectural drawing, the 'laid-out wall elevation' in use in England during this period, exploring its role in the creative processes of the architects who employed it. Winner of the Hawksmoor Medal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain. Available on JStor

Slides to accompany the posted text of the same name. This paper, presented at the Institut für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit in 2024 develops themes first presented in short form at IMC 2019. It reveals the existence of fragments of Giotto’s original paintings in the chancel and apse of the Arena Chapel. These feature fictive materials of brick, combined with undecorated wood, a surprising choice in such a prestigious location. The reasons for this choice are considered: were the frescoed fictive materials a temporary surface? What, if anything, did they signify?  The paper argues that the choice of fictive materials is consistent with the Chapel’s all-embracing semiotic system and is in fact fundamental to it. The overlooked fragments provide a new key to understanding Giotto’s decoration of the Arena Chapel, and perhaps to chancel decorations more widely.

This paper has the same title as one given at IMC Leeds in 2019, but presents a longer more developed version of the arguments presented there. The paper reveals the existence of fragments of Giotto’s original paintings in the chancel and apse of the Arena Chapel. These feature fictive materials of brick, combined with undecorated wood, a surprising choice in such a prestigious location. The reasons for this choice are considered: were the frescoed fictive materials a temporary surface? What, if anything, did they signify?  The paper argues that the choice of fictive materials is consistent with the Chapel’s all-embracing semiotic system and is in fact fundamental to it. The overlooked fragments provide a new key to understanding Giotto’s decoration of the Arena Chapel, and perhaps to chancel decorations more widely.

A paper given as a Murray Seminar on Medieval and Renaissance Art at Birkbeck 26th Jan 2021

Giusto de’ Menabuoi’s little triptych in the National Gallery is signed and dated. With its moveable wings and clearly identifiable subject matter it might seem to be, literally, an open and shut case. However, there is no consensus as to its origins and original ownership, and its purpose is only vaguely understood as ‘devotional’. This paper advances the idea that it was made for a young girl upon her becoming a nun. With this in mind, new perspectives on the triptych can be considered. Intended to serve the new nun in her devotions for her entire life it may nevertheless have held special resonances for her as a child. We can understand it as a memento of family and of a childhood home; as a prize for achievement on a rite of passage; as a prompt to do well in her entrance exams; even as a holy plaything or ‘doll’s chapel’.

A paper given at CIRICE, June 10-12 2021, available in the book of conference procedings 'La citta palinsesto I' at http://www.fedoabooks.unina.it/index.php/fedoapress/catalog/series/Storia

The façade of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padova served as the backdrop and stage-set for a sacra rappresentazione of the Annunciation for nearly three hundred years, from c.1322-1600. During and after that time it was re-modelled and re-decorated a number of times, firstly to serve the staging needs of the performance, then to recall it, and finally to erase all memory of it.  That erasure has been so complete that, while the chapel’s frescoes by Giotto are famous, its apparently blank exterior is completely disregarded. This paper treats the façade as a palimpsest, using archaeological, pictorial and documentary evidence to reconstruct its role in the history of the medieval and Renaissance city. The paper also locates the facade within a much broader civic context and over a longer time-period, to include consideration of the ancient Roman Arena where the chapel stood

A short paper given at Giotto’s O, Courtauld Institute, London, 28 Jan 2019. The paper considered a hitherto-unnoticed transient effect obtained using silver and gold powder, and offered possible explanations of the technique involved and its likely meanings. These are preliminary thoughts only, orginally presented to a smalll private seminar.

During the later middle ages, the questions ‘who makes an art-work?’ and ‘what is a portrait?’ had no simple answers.  The person who commissioned a work of art could be seen as the person responsible for its creation, and the person we call the artist could be regarded as just one of the means employed to make it. The word ‘portrait’ was not in use (at least not in its modern sense), and images of people were not expected to look like anyone recognisable. Giotto and Giovanni Pisano were two of the most famous artists working in Italy in the years around 1300 and they wanted recognition in every sense of the word. But how?
Given as part of the series MURRAY SEMINARS ON MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE ART at Birkbeck, University of London, 4/12/19.

Given as part of a session organised by the author on 'Fictive Materialities in Late-Medieval Italian Art' at the International Medieval Congress at Leeds (1-4 July 2019). The session as a whole considered the revolution in late-medieval Italian art which crystallized around the figure of Giotto and is commonly understood to have been mimetic, naturalistic and illusionistic in its intentions. Other papers were given by Peter Bokody and Giacomo Guazzini. Artists are said to have been engaged in the project of reproducing the visual experience of reality. The session drew attention to a particular phenomenon: that painters often attempted to mimic different materials in the medium of paint. It asked whether these abundant instances of fictive materiality were merely expressions of a general interest in pictorial mimesis, or whether they served other purposes- and if so, what might those purposes have been?  This particular paper considered these questions with respect to discoveries in the chancel of the Arena Chapel in Padua, revealing the use of fictive brick and wood there and considering the iconographic intentions behind their use.

The money-lender Enrico Scrovegni was reputed to be the wealthiest man in Padua when he built and endowed the Arena Chapel in Padua in the early years of the fourteenth century.  The project has long been understood as restitution of his and his father’s usurious gains, and its famous frescoes by Giotto have recently been interpreted as evidence of the patron’s profound spiritual crisis, penitence, and even his ‘conversion’.  The paper considers new documentary evidence of Enrico Scrovegni’s pious endowments and business activity, seeking to understand the patron’s spiritual concerns within the framework of economic exchange that he himself applied. This paper was delivered at the conference ‘Transforming Male Devotional Practices
from the Medieval to the Early Modern' 
University of Huddersfield, September 16th-17th 2015

The Roman amphitheatre of Padua was substantially remodelled during the medieval and early modern periods, most evidently by the addition of the famous Scrovegni palace and chapel, but also by later clearances, renovations and embellishments of other buildings.  It hosted an annual procession and sacra rappresentazione. The paper tracks the remodelling of the Arena and presents new evidence for the activities that took place in it over some three hundred years.  It seeks primarily to understand the space as a stage-set for the celebratory performance of Paduan civic identity, but also suggests how it was the locus of civic anxieties that never quite disappeared.


This paper was given at Birkbeck as part of a day conference organised by the Open University/CHASE institutions  on Friday 24th February 2017

The sacra rappresentazione performed in Padua on the Feast of the Annunciation is first documented in 1278 and continued until its suppression in 1600.  Using a combination of newly-discovered documentary and material evidence it is possible to reconstruct aspects of the performance.  This paper reveals how its costuming benefitted from the loan of dresses and jewels by Lady Jacopina d’Este, who bequeathed them to the performance after her death.  It tracks changes in the increasingly spectacular staging of the event and shows how, over nearly three hundred years, the association between the daughter of a Marquis and the Virgin of the Annunciation echoed on. This paper was presented at IMC Leeds 4-7 July 2016, at a session organised by AVISTA on The Long Lives of Medieval Art and Architecture.

This was delivered at the Andrew Ladis Memorial Conference on Trecento Art, at Tulane University, 10-12th 2017, and has now been published in amended form as '"I, Porrina",a hyper-realistic portrait in the Collegiata of Casole d’Elsa' Art and Experience in Trecento Italy: Proceedings of the Andrew Ladis Memorial Conference in New Orleans, November 10-12, 2016 Vol 1, eds. Holly Flora, Sarah S. Wilkins (New York and Turnhout: Brepols 2018), 61-78 . It considers some outstanding questions surrounding a compelling statue in the Collegiata of Casole d’Elsa, which has only recently been identified as representing the local lord Porrina degli Albertini.  The statue has clear similarities with a statue of Enrico Scrovegni in Padua; both are freestanding portrait statues of laymen in niches accompanied by inscriptions; both are executed in hyper-realistic styles; and both are apparently without precedent.  What is their connection?  Where was the statue of Porrina originally placed, and what was its purpose?  When was it made and why was it moved? Did Porrina actually look like his statue, and how does his image fit into a history of portraiture?  The paper proposes that the answers to these questions lie in the neighbouring Albertini family chapel, and in closer analysis of Porrina’s image and the inscription which accompanied it.

On the occasion of the V&A Museum’s unprecedented exhibition of opus anglicanum, this one-day interdisciplinary conference brings together leading and emerging scholars working on questions of meaning and materiality in medieval textiles, both real and imaginary.
This event is free, and all are welcome. Space is limited, however, so places must be reserved via https://medtex.eventbrite.co.uk
The Birkbeck Medieval Seminar is an annual one-day seminar in which leading scholars present thought-provoking papers on a current research theme in the history and culture of the Middle Ages. It is an environment for accessing and debating current research themes across disciplines. It is intended as a forum to bring together staff and students involved in Birkbeck’s interdisciplinary MA in Medieval Literature and Culture and the MA in Medieval History, as well as anyone with an interest in the Middle Ages.  This year it is co-organised with Birkbeck’s Department of History of Art and is supported by The Murray Bequest, established in memory of Professor Peter Murray, the department’s founder.

(Paper given at the Murray Seminar on Medieval and Reniassance Art, 19th November 2015)  The paper looks at five generations of wives, daughters and brides of the Scrovegni family of Padua who worshipped in the famous Arena Chapel.  Looking at Giotto’s frescoes and less well-known works, she asks what insights can we gain when we place women at the centre of our enquiry, and how we might expand our notions of art-historical enquiry in order to include them?

Considers questions of likeness and verisimilitude in a number of apparently realistic and related portrait sculptures (principally those of Enrico Scrovegni, Porrina degli Albertini, Ubertino and Jacopo da Carrara, and Rizzardo VI di Camino).  Argues that some are exact likenesses, some aim at a form of resemblence, others have no relation to the actual appearance of their subjects.

Considers the portrait effigy of Enrico Scrovegni's tomb in the Arena Chapel, and also his portrait statue in the chapel's sacristy, presenting evidence for the use of facial casting in their production.  Argues for their importance at the origins of a genre of 'facsimile portraiture' more commonly thought to have originated in the fifteenth century.

The Arena Chapel in Padua contains a large number of works which post-date Giotto’s famous frescoes there, and which have received scant attention in the vast literature on the chapel.  This paper examines a number of these works, especially a fresco cycle of the Last Days of the Virgin and a frescoed altarpiece, both dating from the 1320s.  It presents new evidence regarding a confraternity which worshipped in the chapel and had responsibilities for its decoration and upkeep, as well as responsibility for staging a sacra rappresentazione connected to the chapel.  It suggests that the frescoes reflect and facilitate various confraternal practices, and are among the earliest and most complete ensembles of confraternal imagery to survive.

The Roman amphitheatre of Padua was substantially remodelled during the medieval and early modern periods, most evidently by the addition of the famous Scrovegni palace and chapel, but also by later clearances, renovations and embellishments of other buildings.  It hosted an annual procession and sacra rappresentazione, and was on the itinerary of visiting foreign dignitaries. The paper tracks the remodelling of the Arena and presents new evidence for the activities that took place in it over some three hundred years.  It seeks to understand the space as a stage-set for the performance of Paduan civic identity.

Reviews 'Painted Palaces: The Rise of Secular Art in Early Renaissance Italy' by Anne Dunlop, (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), and 'The Commonwealth of Nature: Art and Poetic Community in the Age of Dante' by C. Jean Campbell, (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008)

This thesis is downloadable from the British Library at  http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.363474Existing literature on depicted gesture in medieval art, including work by Gombrich, Barasch and Garnier, is dominated by theories of expressive gesture and/or iconographic methodologies.  A revised approach to depicted gesture takes into account the role of gesture as a means of communication in life, and the ability of viewers to interpret depicted gesture in the light of social experience.  Gesture in medieval liturgy and church drama is examined in the light of such an approach.  Certain images could be understood to participate as actors in performances.  Acting styles in the church dramas, reconstructed through textual analysis, show similarities between the behaviour of actors and that of painted or carved figures.  A basic repertoire of liturgo-dramatic gesture was employed in the visual arts, exploiting viewers'/congregations understanding of such gestures.  Case studies support this case.  Attempts are also made to reconstruct gestural usage outside the confines of the church, through an examination of the nature of sign languages.  Members of religious orders, deaf-mute people, secular actors, preachers, and lay people conducting everyday social transactions all employed gestural sign languages.  The extent to which such 'lost' sign languages may be recovered, and the extent to which they may be reproduced in the visual arts is considered.  Finally, medieval guides to conduct are examined in relation to the visual arts.  Depicted gesture in the visual arts parallels such literary works insofar as both reflect and reinforce prevailing ideologies of decorum.  Giotto's Arena Chapel decorations, and Marian paintings by the major Sienese artists of the trecento, are among works studied in relation to conduct guides, especially guides for women, including the books of Francesco da Barberino.

An introductory piece for a general audience.  The interview comes at the end of the episode, c.7 minutes in, and sadly is the last of the National Gallery's podcasts at http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/podcasts/the-national-gallery-podcast-episode-one-hundred

I will be giving this paper at the Renaissance Society of America's Virtual Conference on December 2022. It should be of interest to historians of art, humanism and gender.

Maddalena Scrovegni (c.1360–1429) lived and wrote in Padua for much of her life, making daily use of the chapel built there by her grandfather and decorated by Giotto. For cultural historians she constitutes a triple rarity: an articulate witness to Giotto's frescos during the century they were commissioned; a female writer in Latin amongst the North Italian humanists of the late fourteenth century; and a woman who has left an unusually large historical footprint for someone of her era and class. We can read what she wrote, and what people wrote about her, and (crucially for this paper) we can see what she saw. This paper considers the frescoes of the Arena Chapel in conjunction with Maddalena's epistolary output, suggesting that she found visual inspiration for her writing in Giotto's frescoes, and that her writings can tell us surprising things about her reception of Giotto's work.

This article considers some outstanding questions surrounding a compelling statue in the Collegiata of Casole d’Elsa, which has only recently been identified as representing the local lord Porrina degli Albertini. The statue has clear similarities with a statue of Enrico Scrovegni in Padua; both are freestanding portrait statues of laymen in niches accompanied by inscriptions; both are executed in hyper-realistic styles; and both are apparently without precedent. What is their connection? Where was the statue of Porrina originally placed, and what was its purpose? When was it made and why was it moved? Did Porrina actually look like his statue, and how does his image fit into a history of portraiture? The article proposes that the answers to these questions lie in the neighbouring Albertini family chapel, and in closer analysis of Porrina’s image and the inscription which accompanied it.

The article discusses the tomb of nobleman Enrico Scrovegni at the Arena Chapel, also called the Scrovegni Chapel, in Padua, Italy. The author suggests that Scrovegni was not immediately buried in the chapel following his 1336 death due to his exile in Venice, Italy, but was later reburied there. The author describes the tomb, including porphyry panels and a marble sarcophagus, and suggests that Scrovegni commissioned tombs designed by sculptor Giovanni Pisano and an unknown master.

Page 1. Giotto's Annunciation in the Arena Chapel, Padua Laura Jacobus Giotto'sAnnunciation fresco in the Arena Chapel, Padua, occupies -a focal position above the chancel arch of the church and is central to the iconographic program of the ...

Abstract Romanesque figure sculpture, to a modern eye, often appears inexpressive. Poses seem rigid, faces blank or stereotypical. We may excuse thiA by saying that the figures are intended to be symbolic and so are exempted from the criteria of naturalistic art, and we may admire the abstract simplicity of the forms, but such perceptions are inevitably tainted by the art historian's concern with style. When such sculptures were originally placed before the congregation in a medieval church they may have been perceived quite differently, for they were experienced in conjunction with liturgy. This article will attempt to reconstruct something of audiences' experiences of narrative art in the medievals church, as viewers, as listeners, and as participants. It will suggest the ways in which words and images interacted to create a fuller, more emotionally affective experience than one might imagine in front of such images today.

The façade of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua seems simple, yet almost every feature is unusual. It was designed as part of a coherent urban space but also served as a backdrop for a sacra rappresentazione. Over three hundred years the representation developed into a more complete drama, and the facade and the Arena were adapted to accommodate it. The façade bears traces of its origins and subsequent adaptations, as well as modern attempts to recall its past and, unfortunately, also to erase it