Fictive Materiality, Real Presence IMAREAL- TEXT

Fictive Materiality and Real Presence in Giotto’s Arena Chapel (IMAREAL, 10 JAN 2024 [SLIDE 2: internal views] [Thank Isabella Nicka] The Arena Chapel in Padua will be well-known to many of you as the work of Giotto, who covered its walls with exceptionally innovative and splendid frescoes. [SLIDE 3: Wall] These include three cycles of narrative scenes on the nave walls, which are framed by bands of fictive marble and cosmatiwork mosaic. All appear to rest on a dado of variegated fictive marbles. The fictive materiality and illusionism of these frames and the frescoed dado beneath them are the subject of a small but growing literature. But this paper will focus on of a much less wellknown part of the chapel, the chancel and apse at the chapel’s east end. [SLIDE 4: Internal View + into chancel] Giotto’s original work in the east end of the church is mostly lost, but fragments of it survive unrecognised. I’ll suggest that they are a fundamental element of Giotto’s entire iconographic scheme for the church. Much of what I have to say today is predicated on my earlier work on the chapel. I have previously argued that Giotto did not only paint the chapel, but also had a very significant input into its architectural design. I’ve said that he envisaged the building and its painted 1 decoration as a single holistic entity. This my fundamental assumption. In the past, I have justified it through analyses of the ways in the which the architecture and its frescoes interact in the main vessel of the church. Today I’ll be applying the same assumption to the architecture and decoration of the east end. This area now comprises a square chancel housing the choir and high altar, and an apse. The sanctuary of any church, the part which houses the high altar, is the holiest part of a church. It may therefore seem surprising that so little attention has been devoted to the east end of the Arena Chapel, but the area has a complex history and its present, muchaltered state helps to explain its scholarly neglect. [SLIDE:1303 and 1305 plans] To first clarify that history and orientate us in the area we’ll be looking at. The chapel’s east end saw not just one change, but two changes of architectural plan over four years. A semi-circular apse was probably built by 1303 and replaced with a polygonal one by 1305. These changes necessitated re-consecration of the high altar. [SLIDE 6:1303 and 1318]. Other changes followed through the centuries. These included the addition of the tomb of the patron, Enrico Scrovegni, in the apse between 1305- 1318 (marked in blue). But the most significant change that concerns us occurred when the 2 chancel was completely redecorated by the Master of the Scrovegni Choir. [SLIDE: Composite view of chancel] This happened in the 1320s or 30s,This composite view shows its present decorations. You can also see the choir stalls [point them out], which we’ll consider later. Despite its chequered history, it is still possible to reconstruct what Giotto planned for the chancel’s original decoration, and to consider why his design took the form it did. What was designed by Giotto is surprisingly easy to answer, and it is also an answer that is highly surprising. [SLIDE 8: fragments in red] Fragments of his original frescoes still survive under later layers of plaster, and they are shown here in red. Some fragments were briefly exposed during restorations in 2000/1 but were then plastered over. Others are still visible today, but they have never been noted in the scholarly literature. [SLIDE: plan of fragments] Their locations may be clearer in plan. The patches of original decoration occur in the square chancel and in the polygonal apse. They can also be seen on the chancel arch rebate, facing forwards into the body of the church. [SLIDE 10: Plan with NE and SE piers] These patches of original fresco show that the chancel and apse were first painted to resemble bare brickwork. This is unexpected, given that the chancel was the 3 holiest part of the church and might be thought to deserve more elaborate decoration. However, it is incontrovertible. The two largest surviving patches are on the north-east and southeast piers of the chancel, adjoining the apse. This fictive brickwork must have been painted upon completion of the chancel and apse in or shortly after 1305. [SLIDE: SE pier in situ with MDCS frescoes] This contextual view of the south side of the chancel shows how the fictive brick was covered up when the entire area was re-frescoed with scenes by the Master of the Scrovegni Choir some twenty or thirty years later, [SLIDE 12: detail SE pier] Zooming in on the exposed original fictive brickwork we can see how preparatory lines had to be scored into the wet plaster, measured out in true horizontal using plumb lines and rulers; each course of mortar and brick then had to be painted with pinkish bricks and off-white lines which represent lime mortar, possibly with further additions a secco to create textural effects. Even in its pale, degraded state, the illusionism of the work is sufficiently strong that many people do not notice that the ‘exposed brickwork’ of the wall is not real. I didn’t notice it when I first started working on the Arena Chapel. [SLIDE: relieving arch- thanks to Francesca Capanna] In the apse, one fragment was revealed above one of the choir-stall canopies during restoration but has since been covered up. Here, the courses 4 of fictive brick vary to form a curve, imitating a relieving arch over one of the stall canopies. This means that the frescoed brickwork imitated the structure of the actual brickwork lying immediately beneath it. Although only one fragment has been revealed, such false arches must have been painted along the walls above all of the stall canopies. They would have introduced an element of decorative variety into the fictive brickwork, as well as a structural realism. [SLIDE: I-R of sacristy door] As I said earlier, I have always argued that Giotto had an input into the design of the chapel’s architecture as well as the frescoes, and that he intended them to work together to form a unified whole. Evidence of that intention is confirmed by multi-spectral analysis by Rita Deiana [thanks!]. She has revealed that the tympanum of the door between the chancel and the sacristy was once surrounded by a decorative band of real brick and stone voussoirs. This tells us that, originally, the frescoed, fictive brick of the chancel was seen alongside the real brick of the tympanum. This is in keeping with Giotto’s practice elsewhere in the chapel, where he made efforts to blur the boundaries between real and fictive architectural materials. [SLIDE 15: West door] For example, in the body of the church he gave the portals completely different forms on the outside and inside of the building. External doorways had semi-circular tympana with 5 decorative voussoirs of red brick and white stone, but the internal forms of the same doors were shaped completely differently, with segmental arches. This was so that they would fit into the fictive marble dado of Giotto’s frescoes, as can be seen in the case of the chapel’s west door, where the segmental curve of a fictive architrave spans two fictive pilasters in a fictive dado. [SLIDE: North door] The same practice can been seen in the north portal, where a fictive marble segmental lintel featuring fictive carvings is inserted into the fictive marble dado. The external form of this portal has been subject to changes but some of its original brick and stone voussoirs can still be seen in this photograph. [SLIDE 17: IR image (repeat)]. In the case of the sacristy door Giotto reversed the arrangements he’d instituted for the nave portals but his reasons remained the same. The sacristy’s internal doorway was built with real voussoirs of red brick and white stone on its interior face. This created a seamless visual transition between real and fictive brick architecture, just as in the main vessel of the church there was a seamless visual transition between real and fictive marble architecture. [SLIDE: stalls] Turning now to the furnishings of the chancel and apse, nine stalls remain on the north and south side of the chancel, while those of the apse have been lost. The remaining stalls are now 6 painted with panels of green and cream marbles, but these belong to the later phase of decoration by the Master of the Scrovegni Choir. [SLIDE 19: Det of layers] We can see traces of the stalls’ original surface where the Master of the Scrovegni Choir’s work has been rubbed away during centuries of use. Bare wood shows as a faded grey-brown surface (Numbered 1). On top of it is another, semitranslucent layer of varnish (numbered 2). Only then comes the Master of the Scrovegni Choir’s fictive marble paintwork (numbered 3). The varnish must be the original finish applied to the stalls. Its effect is to enhance the natural patterns of the wood grain and draw out its contrasts and colours. Finer-grained hardwoods of walnut and poplar were used for the structural elements, but the wood of the back-board panels is larch-wood This is a strongly grained softwood whose dark streaks and whorled knots are made more pronounced by the varnish. The fact that the choir stalls were made entirely from wood, including heavily-grained and flawed wood which might normally be concealed, was a highlighted feature. How far it was conventional to treat choir-stalls in this way is debatable, as few survive from the period. [SLIDE 20: San Fermo stalls]. The stalls of a nearby Franciscan foundation, San Fermo in Verona, were nearly contemporary with those of the Arena Chapel. They conceal the presence of any softwoods used in their construction and display only flawless 7 hardwoods set off by decorative touches of paint. On balance, I think the varnished softwood of the Arena Chapel choir stalls was unusual and therefore potentially significant. [SLIDE: Ante-choir stalls] In the main vessel of the Arena Chapel itself, there are more stalls in the ante-choir. The ante-choir (or laymen’s choir) was a screened area, closest to the chancel, where members of the patron’s close circle sat. The ante-choir stalls are constructed in the same manner as those of the choir, using the same combinations of hardwoods and softwoods. They are now painted with the same fictive green and cream marble panelling used by the Master of the Scrovegni Choir to cover the choir stalls in the 1320s or 30s. But they were originally painted all over to resemble fictive porphyry, [SLIDE 22: det. Ante-choir stalls]. The fictive porphyry is still justabout visible in this slide. So there was a clear contrast between the unpainted wood of the clergy’s choir stalls in the holiest part of the church, and the painted wood of the laymen’s stalls in the antechoir. This adds to the likelihood that the undecorated wood of the choir was a deliberate and significant feature. [SLIDE 23: views of interior and chancel] The question I now turn to is: why? Why decorate the sanctuary of the Arena Chapel, the holiest and most important part of the church, with the plainest possible imitation material, brick? And why leave plain wood undecorated? 8 One possibility is that this state of decoration was a temporary measure. The sanctuary of a church was always the first part of any church to be finished, so that Mass could be celebrated as soon as possible. This often happened before the rest of the church was finished. So, is it possible that the sanctuary of the Arena Chapel was temporarily decorated for very early use, with the intention of returning to ‘properly’ decorate it once the building was finally finished? [SLIDE 24: timeline plans with tomb] I mentioned earlier that the Arena Chapel had a first consecration in 1303, and that it was reconsecrated in 1305 following architectural changes. Those changes resulted in the addition of the polygonal apse we now see, which eventually housed Enrico Scrovegni’s tomb. So, yes, it’s possible there was a temporary decoration with fictive brick and varnished wood, hurriedly put up in time for one or other of the consecration ceremonies. Possible, but unlikely. [SLIDE 25: det. Fictive brick and distempered brick] If a temporary decoration was needed, painting fictive brick would not answer such an immediate need. It is a relatively labour-intensive and slow process, with lines scored into the plaster and so on. If a quick temporary finish had been needed, whitewash or coloured distemper paint was a much more obvious and quick solution. And in fact, distemper was used as a temporary finish in the one area where 9 it was needed. This was on the end wall of the apse, where Enrico Scrovegni’s tomb was planned in 1305 but not yet ready. Although the many changes on this wall make it hard to read, it is clear that when temporary decoration was needed in 1305, a single coat of quick and cheap blue distemper fitted the purpose, not the slow and labour intensive process of plastering and painting fictive brick. [SLIDE 26: internal views of chapel and chancel] Enrico’s tomb sarcophagus was in place by 1318 but it was only after Enrico went into exile, some fifteen years after the chapel was completed, that new frescoes were commissioned for the chancel and apse. So the patron of the Arena Chapel must have been happy for the fictive bricks and bare wood of the chancel to stay in the place of his commemoration during that time. The decoration of the chancel and apse cannot be considered ‘temporary’. And since it was so unusual, it was probably significant. There are some tools within traditional iconographic methodology that might be deployed to answer this question, and we can try applying them. Metaphorical symbolism, if applied here, might suggest that the clay of the fictive bricks represents Christ’s humanity, since in Biblical terms man is formed from clay. By the same convention on metaphorical symbolism, the wood of the choir stalls might represent the wood of the Cross on which Christ was crucified. But there are difficulties with applying traditional 10 iconographic symbolism here. Man’s origins as clay are likened in the Bible to potter’s clay, with God in the role of a creative potter not a labouring brick-maker: biblical references to brick associate it with slavery or demeaning labour, not the act of the divine Creation of humanity. And under some circumstances wood may indeed symbolise the wood of the cross, which was the subject of intense veneration in the Middle Ages. But here, the wood of the choir-stalls was in contact with the bottoms of the clergy, so this symbolism is also problematic. So, while these materials could be interpreted in these ways, I doubt that this kind of metaphorical symbolism was the reasoning behind Giotto’s choices. Nor does another conventional iconographic tool, typological symbolism, apply well here. For instance, the contemporary theologian Durandus provides typological parallels relating the use of various materials in the church to the precious materials of Solomon’s Temple or the Heavenly Jerusalem. But on the subject of brick, he is silent. On the subject of plain wood, Durandus repeatedly reminds the reader that the wooden altars of the Bible were not left plain, but were gilded. Perhaps, social history could be called upon to explain the plain materials of the Arena Chapel choir. Could they be intended to convey a renunciation of wealth by the patron? After all, there is a school of thought which says that Enrico Scrovegni built the chapel 11 as restitution for the sin of usury. I don’t subscribe to this theory, and I hoped to have disproved it in my 2008 book on the Arena Chapel. If I failed then, the book I am now writing on the patron’s family will present further evidence that the theory of Enrico’s renunciation of usury is incorrect! It is true that Scrovegni was a financier who was the richest man in Padua. But Giotto’s decorations in the nave of the church do not hide his wealth or signal its renunciation; they flaunt it! [SLIDE 27: Fictive riches]: ! They positively shimmer with real and fictive riches, of an astonishing sumptuousness which was commented-upon at the time. These fictive riches range from the numerous fields of blue imitating costly ultramarine pigment; to their framing with imitation gilded mouldings and polychromed carvings, fictive marble panels and bands of imitation cosmati-work of marble and gilded glass. Within the narrative scenes are found depicted; gilded and silvered tableware; imitation jacquard linens; other imitation textiles including gold embroidery, gilded and tooled leather, and woven silk. It is not credible that the fictive brick and plain wood which decorated Christ’s own sanctuary were intended to signify Enrico Scrovegni’s rejection of wealth, while he himself sat on an imitation porphyry seat surrounded by such real and fictive luxury. 12 [SLIDE 28: repeat internal view and chancel] So why was the holiest part of the church originally decorated as it was? The answer that I am proposing today is that the decoration of the sanctuary was planned as part of a much broader semiotic system. It derives its meaning from being seen in that wider semiotic context, which I call Giotto’s ‘illusionistic regime’. It is a systematic application of consistent illusionism which covered every surface of the chapel and which, importantly, carried meaning. In my previous work on the Arena Chapel, I proposed that there was a meaningful ‘illusionistic regime’ in the body of the church, but because I was unaware of the original decoration of the sanctuary, I did not completely grasp the extent of this semiotic system. I pointed to the way that Giotto designed the building and its frescoes in tandem, and I said that he did so in a way that carefully reinforced pictorial illusionism, but I don’t think I fully explored the implications of this blurring of boundaries between reality and pictorial fiction. [SLIDE north portal and dado], We’ve already seen blurring of boundaries in the case of the doorways in the nave (and there are several other such instances in the chapel). Later in the fourteenth century, such illusionistic effects often became a kind of visual game, providing visual enrichment but (arguably), little or no symbolic substance. But in Giotto’s case there was a consistent commitment to illusionism, and it was not a gratuitous display of artistic virtuosity. 13 In the Arena Chapel, illusionism- and the closely-related device of fictive materiality- were profoundly meaningful throughout the building. [SLIDE: NE corner with fictive brick and view to chancel] Panning out from the view of the north-east corner of the chapel, we can see how Giotto’s illusionism in the body of the church met the illusionism of the sanctuary. Only a sliver of the fictive brick on the rebate of the triumphal arch now remains to remind us that illusions in the body of the church were visibly contiguous with illusions of the chancel [point it out]. My photoshop skills are non-existent so you have to do some imagining at this point, and remind yourself that the entire sanctuary combined fictive and real architecture, with brick and stone voussoirs above the sacristy door and fictive brick on the walls. So there was a clear juxtaposition of the fictive brick architecture of the chancel and the fictive marble architecture of the main body of the church. Giotto’s ‘illusionistic regime’ was not confined to these kinds of illusionistic effects, where real and fictive architectural forms and materials were made hard to differentiate. The system was applied to every single surface of the chapel’s interior, to the ‘pictorial’ zones as well as the ‘architectural’ ones. [SLIDE: section of wall] Effectively, the frescoed wall is divided up and painted as if it is illusionistically layered, a bit like the rings of an 14 onion. Every layer has its own pictorial depth and its own level of meaning. The system is organised around the idea there is one unseen surface of the wall which is an established point of reference, a ‘benchmark’ for all pictorial illusionism. This primary signifying surface, which exists only as a concept, is overlaid and underlaid by the other signifying surfaces on which Giotto paints his narrative scenes, saints and allegorical figures. All are differently framed and represented as if at different depths in relation to the wall’s layered surface. [SLIDE: Angel and Heavenly Jerusalem] The existence of such an organised semiotic system is most obvious at the top of the Last Judgement. Here, angels illusionistically peel back the level of the wall-surface which depicts the blue vault of Heaven. They reveal the walls and gates of the Heavenly Jerusalem behind it. This place of Celestial eternity is represented as a structure shining and studded with precious gems. [SLIDE: Heavenly Jerusalem and Fictive brick] Hevenly Jerusalem is comprised of rare, light-filled materials which are the opposite of the dull, earthly materials of the chancel and apse. They are opposites not only in physical properties but also in their position at opposite ends of the church, and in what they signify: Heaven and Earth. But both derive their meaning within the same ‘illusionistic regime’. 15 [SLIDE: Last Judgement w. det. of NW corner] At the corners of the chapel, the fictive surfaces that characterise the symbolic layering of the painted walls are also visible. Some layers of the painted wall appear to project forwards, while others appear to be set back. Each fictive surface has a different significance, and somewhere in among them is a notional ‘benchmark’ layer, a point of reference to which they must all relate. But this this is a conceptual level rather than a physical one from which other layers derive their position and meaning. [SLIDE: det. of NW corner] We may think of this conceptual level as Level Zero; its existence is indicated by the strips of dark red paint in the corners of the chapel. There, where the fictive marble architecture of the decoration on each wall does not quite meet-up, we see a neutral, non-illusionistic, non-material, conceptual nonlayer. By this means, Giotto reveals that everything else we see painted on the walls of the chapel is an illusion of a material reality. There is fictive architecture in front of and behind the ‘Level 0’ benchmark layer, at what we can think of and positive and negative layers. I have indicated Levels +1, +2 and -1 and -2, just to give you the idea of what I mean, although in fact there are very many more layers than this. [SLIDE: wall of frescoes] Giotto’s ‘illusionistic regime’ is rigorous. Scholastic exegetical thought divides human history into four 16 periods, termed the Times of Deviation, Renewal, Reconciliation and Pilgrimage. Each of these four periods of human history is allocated a fictive surface at a different depths. [SLIDE: Quatrefoil] We see three of the four periods in the narrative scenes. What scholastic exegesis calls the ‘Time of Deviation’ is in the quatrefoils, These represent the state of nature and human history after the Fall, with Old Testament and Bestiary scenes. They are illusionistically sunk deep into the wall’s surface, because the ‘Time of Deviation’ was in the past. [SLIDE: Moulded frame] The scholastic ‘Time of Renewal’ is shown in the pre-Incarnation narratives of the Life of Mary, and is depicted within deep moulded frames, which are foreshortened form below to reflect their relationship to the viewer. [SLIDE: flat bands] Then comes the scholastic ‘Time of Reconciliation’, the period in which in which Christ walked the earth. These last narrative scenes are framed by shallow bands of colour, painted on the fictive surface which is notionally the shallowest in space. So Christ’s life is the nearest in time to the viewer’s own hereand-now. [SLIDE: People in chapel] According to scholastic thought, the fourth period of human history is the ‘Time of Pilgrimage’. This period follows after Christ’s time on Earth and consists of the present journey of humanity towards the completion of God’s plan, which 17 will come at the Second Coming and Last Judgement. The ‘Time of Pilgrimage’ extends up to the here-and-now, the time we, the viewers, are in. [SLIDE: South wall photomontage with Charity] Within the overall illusionistic regime, images relevant to our ‘Time of Pilgrimage’ appear to project from the wall-surface into our space. They are the images on the Chapel’s fictive dado, which is painted to represent alternating panels of fictive marbles and sculptures set against niches. The sculptures are moral allegories in the form of personifications of the Virtues and Vices. Painted in monochrome, they have an ambiguous existence as they are moral concepts which transcend the conventions of narrative time, but elements seem nevertheless to project into the space of the chapel. In this figure of Charity, the halo of the tiny figure of Christ, to whom she offers her heart, projects illusionistically by overlapping the fictive marble border, and so too does the bowl of fruit and flowers she offers to the viewer. The allegorical personifications encroach on our space because they are there to guide us, the viewers, during the ‘Time of Pilgrimage’. [SLIDE: Hope in SW corner] The layering of the wall (here seen in the South-West corner of the building) suggests that we and our allegorical guides in the dado co-exist in the here-and-now of the chapel’s interior. This impression of our co-existence with the dado 18 was originally reinforced by other means, because the fictive architectural form of the dado was made to appear contiguous with the real forms of the chapel’s furnishings and fittings, blurring the boundaries between reality and illusion. [SLIDE: tramezzo and ante-choir stalls] Some of these furnishings and fittings have been altered or lost, but they included the chapel’s now-lost tramezzo or screen which once divided the chapel into nave and ante-choir. Only parts of it survive as low walls and ambos. The fittings also included the stalls of the ante-choir [point them out]. Both of these real structures, in their original forms, appeared to be contiguous with the fictive dado. [SLIDE: Tramezzo reconstruction with Temperance] This slide shows my most recent reconstruction of the tramezzo, which indicates how the boundaries between real and fictive structures were blurred. At the points where the handrails of the original tramezzo stairs joined the wall, they aligned with the painted framework of the dado so that real marble and the fictive marble forms matched up [point out and explain detail]. This will have been intended to create the impression that marble panels of the screen and the fictive marble panels of the dado were parts of the same continuous architectural structure, present in the viewer’s own ‘Time of Pilgrimage’. [SLIDE: det. Temperance] In an indication of Giotto’s wit, the guidance that the figure of Temperance offered at this point, was 19 directed at the priest mounting the stairs to deliver the homily. Temperance’s tongue is bridled, a hint was that he should follow the advice of contemporary preaching manuals and not talk to excess. [SLIDE: ante-choir stalls] The decoration of the ante-choir stalls was also intended to blur the boundaries between real and fictive structures. As we saw earlier, they were originally painted to imitate porphyry. Due to a change in floor level the stalls now stand around 11cms higher than they did, but at their original height (marked in red) they coincided with a frescoed band of imitation porphyry on the wall. This was a deliberate coincidence, creating a seamless transition between the fictively-projecting dado and the physically projecting stalls. So both the original tramezzo and ante-choir stalls appeared to be materially integrated with the dado [SLIDE: View from ante-choir towards Last Judgment/Time of Pilgrimage] There was a sense that the fictively projecting dado of the wall, and the chapel’s fittings, were all present in the viewer’s own time and space. As they stood in the body of the church, guided by the dado’s Virtues and Vices, , the destination of the viewer’s spiritual journey in the ‘Time of Pilgrimage’ was on the chapel’s retro-façade. [SLIDE: Last Judgement] Here, in the Second Coming and Last Judgement, the future of humanity, and the end of all earthly time, is depicted as extending into a deep illusionistic space. It is a space of 20 far greater depth than that accorded to the historical times of Deviation, Reconciliation and Renewal which we saw were depicted in relatively shallow spaces on illusionistic levels on the side walls. [SLIDE: Last Judgement +Prevost] At the bottom of the wall, the depicted space and time are still contiguous with the viewer’s own. In a detail which bridges the viewer’s present and future, the white habit of the Prevost of the Chapel, who was among the living at the time, traverses the surface of the wall. Trailing over the fictive doorframe it crosses into the viewer’s space. [SLIDE: Last Judgement + Angel +Prevost] And at the very top of the scene, as we saw earlier, the wall-surface is rolled back altogether to reveal the Heavenly Jerusalem, an eternity which is omnipresent, and conceptualised as unbounded by any wall-surface at all. These things can be shown together because Giotto’s engagement with time and space was not confined to the representation of the four historical periods of scholastic thought. In Giotto’s scheme, as in medieval thought, earthly, historical time is linear, with one period connected to another which succeeds it. But time is also mystically interconnected, across eternity, by Gods plan. This divine, eternal time exists simultaneously with earthly time. The end of earthly time will come, as seen in the Second Coming and Last Judgement, but God’s time is eternal and omnipresent. 21 And earthly, historical time may be linear, but it also intersects cyclically with liturgical time, because liturgical time repeats annually through the succession of days and years. Feast days come around each year, and the liturgical hours come around each day. Giotto’s illusionistic regime, so rigorous in the way it uses spatial illusionism to map the linear time of the four scholastic periods, also recognises this fluidity of liturgical and divine time. Calculated coincidences of the different sorts of time could play out on the painted walls of the chapel, and they still do. [SLIDE: Route of sunbeam] I have written before about one such coincidence of liturgical time and earthly time which happens annually on the Feast of the Annunciation. This day was also the Feast of the Chapel’s Dedication and Consecration, which I intend to write about in my next book. On this day, a sunbeam crosses the darkened retro-façade and passes between the hands of Enrico Scrovegni and the Virgin, who are depicted in the Dedication Scene embedded within the Last Judgement. The annual passage of the sunbeam belongs to the dimension of liturgical time. I have witnessed it twice, and each time it has felt miraculous. [Sunbeam SLIDES- end with third] The gap between our own world, Giotto’s world and the limitless, interconnected world of G-d’s eternity, is bridged. 22 [SLIDE: 2 x wall-surfaces and sunbeam] I’ll briefly sum up this analysis, before returning to the question of fictive materiality which is the central concern of this seminar. We’ve seen that on the walls of the chapel, a notional wall-surface was illusionistically overlaid and underlaid by painted layers. These encoded the divine plan as it played out in the past, present and future, and on into eternity. So, the wall-surface acts as a threshold for the viewer in the ‘here-andnow’, through which can be seen God’s plan for humanity. What is more, that threshold was permeable when transformed in liturgical time, whereby the connection between earthly time and God’s omnipresent eternity, is continually reinforced. And with that in mind, we can now return to the original decoration of the chancel and apse, and ask how does it fit into this scheme? [SLIDE: surfaces x 4] In the body of the church, the wall-surface is treated as a conceptual threshold, not a material one, comprised of illusionary layers. By contrast, in the chancel and apse, the wallsurface is depicted as a material reality, as if all illusionistic layers of fresco have been entirely stripped away. Even the unpainted stalls declare the absence of illusion, the wood’s grain and flaws varnished and displayed as signs of its material reality. To be clear about this: Giotto has not actually left the wall unplastered, because actual bare brick would be devoid of signification. Only through the act of representation does Giotto’s overarching semiotic scheme remains 23 intact. Within that semiotic system, the two ends of the chapel operate differently and contrast with each other. At one end of the chapel, angels peel back the wall-surface to reveal eternity, at the other end, the painted wall-surface is stripped away to reveal apparent ‘reality’ of the wall itself. [SLIDE: Elevation of the Host] Why this contrast? I think it is because in cyclical, liturgical time, the chancel of the Arena Chapel is where Christ becomes present at the altar, every day, through the miracle of eucharistic transubstantiation. In the consecrated host, Christ is understood not to be symbolically represented, but actually, physically present and mystically alive in his body. This, the ‘Real Presence’ of Christ, is what the stripped-down materials of the sanctuary convey. This may sound complicated, but the ideas being conveyed by Giotto using pictorial means would not have been unfamiliar to the laity. The liturgical year governed people’s lives. The four periods of human history were outlined in the preface of the Golden Legend, a widely-used preacher’s source-book. The omnipresence of God in people’s lives was accepted as a given, and stories of how God and the saints reached across eternity to perform miracles were commonplace. To the medieval laity, a great deal of Giotto’s pictorial scheme would have been comprehensible through common sense and intuition. 24 [SLIDE: Diagram of walls] And for a religious teacher or a preacher wanting to convey more sophisticated theological ideas, the scheme’s diagrammatic clarity is not unlike the kind of thing one can do with a PowerPoint presentation; this kind of thing! [SLIDE: Elevation of the host/Man of Sorrows] The concept of the Real Presence of Christ in the consecrated host was, perhaps, less easily understood by the laity. The theologically-educated Augustinian canons seated in the choir will have been aware of debates on the nature of transubstantiation, but these abstract ideas were not necessarily the stuff of popular religion. Instead, the popular cult of Corpus Christi, which gathered pace and official papal sanction during the latter part of the thirteenth century, focussed on the practice of veneration of the host. The cult eventually developed new visual traditions which lent themselves to lay devotion. These associated the Eucharistic host with the dead and broken body of Christ, the ‘Man of Sorrows’. But when Giotto designed the chapel between c.1300-1303, the Feast of Corpus Christi was not yet widely adopted in Italy and the ‘Man of Sorrows’ was not yet a common image. The prevalent conception of the ‘Real Presence’ of Christ in the Eucharist was a more orthodox conception that had existed for centuries. Church doctrine stated that the consecrated host was transformed into Christ’s body alive and triumphant over death, not this dead body. 25 And it is the idea of the Christ Triumphant that was expressed in Giotto’s decorative scheme. [SLIDE: Chancel arch wall and arches] The design of the chancel arch wall reinforced the association of the sanctuary with the Real Presence of Christ’s triumphant body. Since at least the sixth century the chancel arch was known in Italy as the ‘triumphal arch’, and Giotto embedded the image of a classical triumphal arch in the chancel arch wall. We can see the outlines of a classical triumphal arch in the fictive marble pilasters with classical carvings which articulate the wall surface, and in the wall’s horizontal division into stories which correspond to the dado, intermediate and attic stories of various Roman triumphal arches. [SLIDE with superimposed lines to demonstrate]. The superimposed lines may make it clearer. It’s worth noting here that the design of this wall underwent several alterations during the architectural changes that occurred in the period 1303-5. My analysis of work patterns suggests that painting on this wall paused for much of that period. For that reason, we cannot be sure of what Giotto originally designed to fill the pictorial fields created by the arch’s architectural divisions into four stories. However, we can be sure that certain elements are likely to have been planned from the start as they were incorporated into the fabric of the building itself, before painting even started. These elements include several of the architectural 26 components of the composition, those which suggest the outlines of a Roman triumphal arch. [SLIDE: East and West End] Giotto’s illusionistic regime, I have been suggesting, covers all parts of the chapel. The relationships between each of these parts are what generates meanings. By this logic, the chancel arch wall at the East end of the chapel and the retro-façade at the West end need to be re-considered in relation to each other. The fictive pilasters of the triumphal arch are identical to the same fictive features on the opposite wall of the chapel, with the same motifs of inset carved rinceaux and roll-moulded corners. Yet there is a significant difference. [SLIDE: Chancel arch wall with architectural dets] On the triumphal arch wall, the fictive architecture gradually increases in three dimensionality as it gets closer to the sanctuary. This increasing three-dimensionality was both physical, in the form of the impost blocks of the chancel arch, and pictorial in the form of the painted pilasters and architraves surrounding the arch. Further away from the sanctuary, at the far corners of the chancel arch wall, there are stucco capitals in mid-height relief. These are illusionistically modelled, graduating in perspective over two-dimensional, perspectivally-painted pilasters. Closer to the sanctuary, around the chancel arch, we see fully-modelled stone impost blocks on top of real stepped pilasters. 27 [SLIDE: Dets of imposts around the Betrayal] Zooming in on these details, we can see how this works. The capitals of the fictive pilasters are illusionistically integrated with the paintings on one side (as they appear to overlap the paintings’ frames), but they are three-dimensional as they negotiate the rebate of the real arch. [SLIDE: Dets of imposts around the Betrayal and fictive brick lower down] ] Losses and later painting mean that we can no longer see much of the original painting on the rebate of the arch, but two sections survive lower down the arch. These sections show that the fictive brick that decorated the chancel also once covered the rebate of this the arch. [SLIDE: recon of arch with fictive brick]. This reconstruction shows how originally the fictive brick surrounded the actual chancel arch forming a continuous illusion with the fictive marble architecture in the body of the church. So, on the triumphal arch of the chancel arch wall, there was a gradual transition from pictorial architecture towards real architecture- all the while maintaining contrasting fictive materialities of marble and brick. The same semiotic system governs both spaces. Within that system, the ‘here-and-now’ of the ‘Time of Pilgrimage’ in the body of the church; meets the ‘here-andnow-and-over-again’ of liturgical time in the sanctuary; and the ‘forever’ of divine eternity that materialised at the High Altar. 28 [SLIDE: the Chancel and apse today] This vision had been lost up til now, because Giotto’s work was painted over by the Master of the Scrovegni Choir in the chancel. That work was, I suggest, conducted at a confraternity’s behest in the 1320s or 30s, when the chapel’s patron Enrico Scrovegni was in exile. The theological concerns that lay behind Giotto’s use of fictive brick and undecorated wood were then forgotten, or actively rejected. Instead, the holiest part of the church was decorated more splendidly and conventionally with brightly coloured fictive marbles. Its narrative imagery was orientated towards the concerns of the confraternity. These concerns almost certainly included the now-popular cult of Corpus Christi, which became more widely promoted in Italy in the 1320s. Giotto’s theme of Christ’s Triumph had not catered-for this cult at all, and may explain why it was obliterated. [SLIDE: View with Men of Sorrows] His omission was ‘rectified’ by the inclusion of two images of the Man of Sorrows. One covered up the tympanum of the sacristy door which had previously, as we saw, featured one of Giotto’s several carefully-planned coincidences of real and fictive brick. The other was on the reverse lunette of the triumphal arch. [SLIDE: View of Arena Chapel] So, to sum up my answer to the question of how the fictive brick and undecorated wood of the chancel fit into the original iconographic scheme of the Arena 29 Chapel… I’m suggesting that when the viewer stood in the body of the church, the frescoed scenes declared “You stand in the ‘Time of Pilgrimage’ in present time and space. Through the illusionistic threshold of the chapel’s walls you are shown God’s plan for humanity’s past and future”. But when, during the celebration of Mass, the viewer looked through the chancel arch, a physical threshold, the frescoed walls seen there proclaimed something different. They proclaimed ‘This is not illusory. This is real, and your salvation is here, now, in the Real, Triumphant Presence of Christ in the Eucharist’. [Thank-you slide] 30