derbes and sandona

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Barren Metal and the Fruitful Womb: The Program of Giotto's Arena Chapel in PaduaAuthor(s): Anne Derbes and Mark SandonaSource: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 80, No. 2 (Jun., 1998), pp. 274-291Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3051233Accessed: 23/08/2008 15:13

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Barren Metal and the Fruitful Womb: The Program of Giotto's Arena Chapel in Padua Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona

Unde fit quidam partus cum denarius ex denario crescit.

(Thus, a kind of birth takes place when money grows from

[other] money.)-Thomas Aquinas, In VIII libros Politico- rum expositio1

Quod concepisti parturies. (What you have conceived, you will bear.)-Meditationes Vitae Christi2

A network of meaning surrounds the viewer who stands at the center of the Arena Chapel. Above the chancel arch, God the Father dispatches Gabriel to the Annunciation-the beginning of redemption (Fig. 1). Behind us, on the west wall, the Last Judgment (Fig. 2) brings divine intention to its cosmic closure. Facing the altar, we move clockwise through the stories in the nave frescoes, their strong narratives imitating the medieval conception of history, the movement of God's will through time. Above us in a starry azure vault, eternity looks down on the productions of time. Each wall of the

chapel offers the viewer a series of paired antithetical images. On the dado, personifications of Virtues on the south wall

oppose Vices on the north wall. The monumental Last

Judgment on the west wall is itself a confrontation of opposites: Christ, radiant and lofty, versus Satan, in the shadowy depths; below Christ, the elect to his right versus the damned to his

left; the devoutly kneeling patron, Enrico Scrovegni, versus the hanged and eviscerated traitor Judas. This pictorial microcosm bespeaks a consistency and symmetry comparable to Dante's Divine Comedy.

It is, then, all the more surprising when, standing in that central vantage point, one confronts the most provocative of these formal arrangements. On the east wall, on either side of the altar, are three pairs of frescoes flanking the chancel arch

(just below the central image of God the Father dispatching Gabriel to Mary). Little effort is required to relate two of these

pairs; in the highest pair, Gabriel and the Virgin Mary face each other across the divide of the chancel (thus bridging the

gap by their mutual gaze); in the lowest pair, two illusionistic chambers share the same vantage point.3 But between these is a pair whose relatedness is, to say the least, problematic, if not a startling anomaly in this chapel's system of meanings: Why juxtapose the Pact of Judas and the Visitation in such a

prominent position on either side of the chancel arch? The

very attention given to these two themes is curious, for neither

subject figures conspicuously in late medieval Italian art; further, the thematic connection between the two is far from obvious. Moreover, unlike the Gabriel/Mary pair above, or the doubled chambers below, this pair does not bridge the chancel gap but sustains it, employs the gap as part of its

meaning. Here the figures with the greatest visual interest (Judas and the high priest; Mary and Elizabeth) are farthest from the architectural center; indeed, attendant figures insist on this separation with their backs to the arch. Surely, this pair

of frescoes represents a coincidentia oppositorum, a confrontation of meaningful opposites-but what are the meanings of this opposition? The vast literature on Giotto's work in the Arena Chapel has all but overlooked the interpretive possibilities of this antithetical pairing. Our investigation seeks to

ground the opposition of Judas and Mary in a cultural

understanding-the redemptive power of Mary's womb as

counterpoise to what was then considered the sterility of

ill-gotten gains-and in the context of the Scrovegni family history.

Giotto's fresco cycle, commissioned by Enrico Scrovegni early in the fourteenth century, is surely one of the most

thoroughly studied monuments in the history of art.4 The

building was intended to be a small private chapel, for Enrico, "his wife, his mother, and his family," according to an early document; it was also to be Enrico's burial place.5 Enrico

purchased the land for the chapel and the family palace in

1300; the chapel was dedicated on the feast of the Annuncia-

tion, March 25, 1303.6 The Annunciation had for some time been associated with the location; an earlier church, known as S. Maria Annunziata, may have occupied the site, and a play of the Annunciation had been enacted there at least since 1278.

However, the Scrovegni Chapel became known as S. Maria della Carita: thus Enrico referred to it in his will, as did Pope Benedict XI in a document of 1304.7

The meaning of the chapel's fresco program has generated much discussion. Many scholars today accept the argument, most fully advanced by Ursula Schlegel, that Enrico had the

chapel built and decorated to expiate the sin of usury, through which his father, Reginaldo, had amassed a fortune.8 As Schlegel observes, the program includes a number of unusual features that point to a preoccupation with ill-gotten gains. Most important is the prominence of Judas-both on the chancel wall, where he confers with the high priests and

grasps his money bag, and in the LastJudgment. As she notes, in this fresco the connection between greed and damnation is

explicit: several of the damned, hanging like Judas, are

suspended by the strings of their money bags tied around their necks. Several scholars have supported Schlegel's argument, adding that a third scene, the Expulsion of the Merchants

from the Temple, also reveals a concern with the family's dubiously acquired wealth.9 This subject is almost as uncommon in medieval Italian art as the Pact of Judas, which,

significantly, adjoins it on the north wall.

Although some have expressed reservations, we are con- vinced that Schlegel, and those who follow her, are correct.10

First, we would argue that the references to usury are even more specific than Schlegel proposed. For instance, the association of Judas with usury, which Schlegel grasped intuitively, is confirmed by fourteenth-century texts. Remigio of Florence (d. 1319), whose tract on usury coincides closely

THE PROGRAM OF GIOTTO'S ARENA CHAPEL IN PADUA 275

1 Giotto, Chancel wall, Padua, Arena Chapel, ca. 1303-5 (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, New York)

in date with the Arena Chapel, states that the usurer is even worse a traitor than Judas, for the usurer, unlike Judas, does not attempt to make restitution.11

It may be, too, that the damned who hang from the strings of money bags in the Last Judgment include not merely the avaricious but also the usurious, for both are typically represented with money bags around their necks.12 The two are, of

course, closely related: in the category of sins, avarice is the

generic sin and usury is a specific instance of it.13 Although it is impossible to be certain whether the fresco depicts the

generally avaricious or the specifically usurious, Jacques de

Vitry (d. 1240) describes usurers in exactly this fashion.14

Dante, too, describes usurers with money bags around their

necks-including a man whose bag bears a pregnant sow, the emblem of the Scrovegni family (Inferno, canto 17, lines

43-78).15

276 ; ART BtI.l.ETIN JUNE 1998 V)OlIUME LXXX NUMBER 2

2 Giotto, LastJudgment. Arena Chapel (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, New York)

Further, the argument that the Expulsion of the Merchants alludes to usurious practices also finds support in late medieval texts; a patristic sermon known as the Eiciens, appended (ca. 1180) to Gratian's highly influential compilation of canon law, the Decretum, interprets the biblical episode of the

Expulsion of the Merchants as a commentary on usury: "More cursed than all merchants is the usurer, for he sells a

thing not bought, as do the merchants, but given by God." Giotto's contemporary Remigio of Florence is still more

explicit: "The Lord spoke to usurers in Matt. XVI: 'You have made this place a den of thieves.' "16

Though this visual and textual evidence seems to us to confirm the acuteness of Schlegel's thesis, we see the program of the chapel as being still more specific and more sophisti- cated than previously imagined, revealing a sharply focused

strategy for the theme of expiation. Juxtaposed with the

repeated visual references to usury are recurring references

to fecundity, which was understood throughout the Middle

Ages as usury's antithesis, and which here represents salvation for the Scrovegni family.

Metal's Increase Let us begin with Schlegel's strong claim that the Scrovegni family history participates in the chapel's meaning. It is often assumed that only Reginaldo practiced usury, but Enrico himself was also actively involved in this condemned practice.17 However, Enrico apparently renounced the enterprise by 1300; Hyde notes that "between 1297 and 1300, evidence for large-scale lending by the Scrovegni comes to an end."'l Though the absence of records cannot be considered conclu-

sive, the year 1300 seems to have marked a critical juncture for Enrico: his father died in this year, l' and it was in this year that he purchased the land for the chapel in which he was to be buried.


Reginaldo's death probably caused Enrico considerable

anguish about his father's fate and about his own. Usurers were viewed with contempt by contemporary clerics, who

spun horrific tales of the searing agonies that hell reserved for these sinners.20 Though these sermons did not stop the

practice, we wonder about the impact of such tales on a man whose father, a legendary usurer, had just died. Usurers could

escape this fate only by confessing their sins and making restitution.21 But the year 1300 must have offered hope to Enrico: it was a Jubilee year, the first such celebration in the Western Church, and it represented an opportunity for

repentance on a grand scale.22 The chronicler Giovanni Villani (d. 1348) reports, "Pope Boniface VIII ... granted a

supreme and great indulgence ... full and complete pardon of all sins ... as well as remission of guilt and punishment, provided the sins were or would be confessed."23 It is possible, as Schlegel proposes, that Enrico received absolution from

Pope Benedict XI and that the erection of the chapel was one of the terms of absolution.24 Whatever the specific circum-

stances, the chapel must have been enormously meaningful for Enrico, and not only as an expiation for his father's sin: it served as both a public confession and a form of restitution for his own usurious acts.

Enrico Scrovegni's understanding of his sinful past (or present?) may have been complex. In canon law and in scholastic speculation, usury was considered not only socially disruptive behavior (that is, a sin againstjustice-a species of

theft) but also metaphysically subversive behavior (a sin

against nature). For centuries, a governing simile presided over the sin of

usury. Beginning with Aristotle and continuing through the scholastic tradition, the sin was understood as a perversion of

money's inherently sterile nature. Usury, because it forces

money to breed, was considered in contradistinction to the

procreative processes of the animate world.25 Aristotle's choice of the word tokos (to indicate interest yielded from

money lending) had, according to Odd Langholm, a powerful effect on this natural law argument and, consequently, on the ecclesiastical imagination: "tokos in Greek means off-

spring, as well as usury, thus suggesting a most powerful simile: usury is that form of acquisition which consists in

making money breed money and it is against nature because

only natural organisms can breed an offspring."26 Gratian's

Decretum, the basis for canon law, notes that usury makes gold breed gold:

Repeatedly, by the most vile cunning of usury, gold is born from gold itself [ex ipso auro aurum nascitur]. Never is there satisfaction; never will there be an end in sight for the

greedy. But he says: "What is the injustice since I haven't

usurped the belongings of others, but instead (being thrifty) have stored up my own goods?" O impudent statement! How can you say "my own goods"? Which? From which hidden places on this earth were you brought forth? When you came into this light, when you came out of your mother's womb, which resources and goods accom-

panied you as you entered? (1.47.8).27

In the mid-thirteenth century Aristotle's Politics was trans- lated into Latin, and his arguments were often cited by the

scholastics.28 Albertus Magnus is credited with reviving Aristo- telian thought and introducing it into the argument against usury.29 Albert's student Thomas Aquinas, in his commentary on the Politics, follows Aristotle closely, reasserting that money does not naturally bear fruit.30 Indeed, Aquinas, in glossing Aristotle, offers this interesting gloss on Politics 1.3: "Tokos, he

explains, means partus (birth)."31 Aristotle's dictum was echoed repeatedly-by, among others, Giles of Lessines (d. 1304), a Dominican at the University of Paris; Aegidius Romanus (d. 1316), minister general of the Augustinians; and Alexander Bonini (d. 1314), minister of the Lombard prov- ince of the Franciscan order.32 Though their interpretations differ, all of these writers cite the natural law argument against usury as the unnatural breeding of money.33

Alexander Bonini, writing in the same years that Giotto was

painting the Arena frescoes, begins to fill out the sexual

implications of the simile: "[By usury] it is understood that

money generates money. But money, by means of this craft,

reproduces itself as if by impregnation and birth [crescit in

seipsa quasi per pregnationem et partum] ."34 Contemporaries of Bonini more specifically associate usury with perverse sexual-

ity. Remigio of Florence, possibly a teacher of Dante, begins his tract on usury with a lengthy comparison of the sin with

sodomy.35 Nor was this connection lost on Dante. When, in the eleventh canto of Inferno, Virgil explains the overarching plan of hell, he points out to Dante that "the smallest round

stamps with its seal/ Both Sodom and Cahors."36 Singleton, citing Boccaccio and other contemporary references, observes that this "small town in southern France [Cahors] ... was famous in the Middle Ages as a great center of usurers, so much so that the term Caorsinus became a common synonym for usurer."37 Dante, then, considers Sodom and Cahors

comparable as infernal communities. On a plain that stretches from the wood of the suicides to the edge of Geryon's abyss, the poet places those who have committed sins of violence

against nature; the sodomites (canto 15) and the usurers

(canto 17) occupy the same metaphysical space on the

burning sand of that plain. The connection between usury and forbidden sexuality

emerges elsewhere in medieval theology. The late twelfth-

century master Peter the Chanter (Summa, par. 147.2.351), Robert of Courton (d. 1219; Summa, 20.10-11), and Thomas of Chobham (d. 1230s; Summa confessorum, 509) all associate

prostitution with usury, as Jacques Le Goff has shown.

Thomas, for instance, wrote, "The Church takes action

against usurers as it does against other thieves, for they engage in the public trade of usury in order to live. In like manner, the Church takes action against prostitutes, who offend God by carrying on prostitution, as a trade by which

they gain their livelihood."38 An inevitable extension of the sexual metaphor involves the

offspring of this unnatural breeding: receiving interest on a loan is like a proliferation of progeny-which is as difficult to contain as the heads of the Hydra. Once set in motion by the usurer, money reproduces with such rapidity that retrieving it (as a form of expiation) is like retrieving time itself.39 Thus, as usurious offspring increases, the degree of spiritual offense

correspondingly increases. Because of this uncontrolled

growth, it is virtually impossible to undo the sin without giving

278 ART BULLETIN JUNE 1998 VOLUME LXXX NUMBER 2

up the entirety of one's personal wealth. Inheriting a usurer's wealth is, then, doubly problematic. In an early thirteenth-

century penitential manual (ca. 1205), Robert of Flambor-

ough (d. 1224) offers detailed advice to the son of a usurer. He suggests that the confessor inquire specifically about the

acquisition of household properties-which were ill-gotten, which not. The penitent son cannot retain any of the wealth that his father accumulated by way of usury. In an odd sense, the usuriously acquired wealth and the son enter into a sibling rivalry-incorrigible and repentant offspring of the usurer.40

These Aristotelian, Scholastic, canonical, and homiletic

understandings of usury would no doubt have been familiar in the university town of Padua. Gratian's Decretum, which includes the Aristotelian analysis of usury, was widely used at the University of Padua, a renowned center of legal study.41 Aegidius Romanus's commentaries on Aristotle, which also restate his argument against usury, were probably known in Padua as well.42 It is highly likely that a scholarly cleric advised Giotto in the program of the chapel. Claudio Bellinati has

suggested that the author of the program was Enrico Scroveg- ni's friend Altegrado de' Cattanei, professor of law at Bologna and then at Padua and archpriest of the cathedral of Padua.43

Surely a legal scholar like Altegrado would have been inti-

mately acquainted with the Aristotelian argument against usury. His years in Bologna would have only deepened his

knowledge of the issues; as John T. Noonan has pointed out, canonists at Bologna were particularly concerned with the

study of Roman law and usury.44 Padua itself was one of the most important centers of Aristotelianism at this time.45 It is not surprising that the works of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventura are listed in the catalogue of manuscripts for the Biblioteca Antoniana (the library of the basilica); more surprising, and significant, is the fact that Alexander Bonini (the Franciscan theologian on usury) is also well

represented.4 Clearly, then, the Aristotelian interpretation of

usury was well known in scholarly circles in Padua by the end of the thirteenth century; whoever the author of the program, he would have been familiar with these contemporary no- tions.

According to Le Goff, usury was at the center of one of the

predominant crises in this embryonic state of European capitalism.47 Add to this the Church's emergent conceptualiz- ing of sin as an event determined by intention (rather than

simply an action in and of itself); and finally, consider the

theological dimensions of describing a sin that continually perpetuates itself, a sin that imitates sexual procreation in an infernal inversion. Enrico Scrovegni's circumstances in later

life, then, represent a convergence point for many of the central concerns of his culture. For Enrico, usury-a misuse of money comparable to the sodomitic perversion of sexual increase, the fornication of the prostitute, or the sown wild oats of the profligate-would have been the source of social ostracism and personal embarrassment; above all, it would have seemed an almost insurmountable offense against God. One could, then, understand the chapel and its fresco

program as a concrete (albeit subtle) admission of guilt-as it

simultaneously participates in the expiation of a father's sin. But the undoing of usury's unnatural procreation (extraordinary as it is) has suggested an equally extraordinary redemp-

tive sign-a sign as otherworldly and paradoxical as the Incarnation itself. Usury is undone in the pregnancy of the

Virgin.

Love's Increase While usury has been generally accepted as an important theme of the chapel's program, a related theme, equally insistent, has been overlooked: fertility. It is this theme, placed in conjunction with our observations on usury, that seems to make the program of the chapel both more complex and more focused than has been previously imagined.

The barrenness of Joachim and Anna opens the cycle, when the childlessJoachim is unceremoniously expelled from the temple (Fig. 3); as the Legenda Aurea states, "it was not

proper for a sterile man ... to stand among men who begot sons."48 It is only afterJoachim's public humiliation, retreat to his shepherds, and subsequent sacrifice that he and Anna are rewarded with Anna's miraculous conception.49 The six narratives on the opposite wall, from the Birth of the Virgin to the four scenes that recount her marriage, further develop the theme. All of this is most unusual in Italian fresco cycles; the Joachim and Anna cycle is rare in earlier Italian painting, and the four scenes elaborating the Marriage of the Virgin are

unique in extant duecento or trecento art.50 Numerous details in these four frescoes convey fruitfulness and procreation. Consider not only Joseph's blooming rod (Fig. 4), which is iconographically mandated, but also the leafy gar- lands of the young musicians in the marriage procession and the verdant branch projecting from the window of the bride's house (Fig. 5), which Bruce Cole has rightly associated with the child that Mary will soon bear.51 Even the stances of

Mary's attendants, who rest their hands on rounded abdo-

mens, call to mind the positions of women in early pregnancy (Fig. 4, 5).

The miraculous pregnancy of the Virgin is given exceptional emphasis in the chapel as well. The Annunciation is featured on the chancel wall, and the scene above, of God the Father dispatching Gabriel to deliver the message (Fig. 1), is

unprecedented in Italian art.52 Though the feast of the Annunciation was long associated with the site, as the play enacted there suggests,53 its significance to Enrico Scrovegni may go even further: it simultaneously marks the beginning of human redemption and the beginning of Christ's gestation in

Mary's womb. Another sign of the importance of fecundity in the chapel is

a third scene on the chancel wall: the Visitation (Fig. 6) just below the Annunciate Virgin and opposite the Pact ofJudas (Fig. ). The Visitation, which records the meeting of the

pregnant cousins Mary and Elizabeth, is a relatively minor

subject in biblical narratives; it does not appear often in duecento painting and is almost never singled out for special treatment, as it is here. While several scholars have remarked on the presence of the Visitation on the chancel wall and

speculated about its juxtaposition with the Pact ofJudas, the reasons for its placement have remained elusive.

"What You Have Conceived, You Will Bear" The tie between usury and fertility seems to us critical to the

meaning of the chapel. Perhaps most important is the

'IHE PROGRAM OF GIOTTO'S ARENA CIIAPEI. IN PArl)A 279

3 Giotto, Expulsion ofJoachim. Arena Chapel (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, New York)

opposition of the Pact of Judas with the Visitation on the chancel wall (Figs. 6, 7). The apparent incongruity of this

pairing has been noted often.54 Nevertheless, Giotto surely intended them to be read together: multiple visual cues link the two images. In each, four figures stand in two pairs, with a fifth figure present as well; in each, the central pair (Mary and

Elizabeth,Judas and the high priest) wear red and yellow; and a third figure wears pale green; in each, a small building supported by columns, with arched doorway, flat roof, and inset relief decoration, appears to the right. Even the placement of Judas's money bag, at his abdomen, seems to echo the pregnancy of the women in the Visitation. But the linking of these two images cannot have been simply to provide compositional and coloristic balance. Contemporary observ- ers would likely have seen the link as thesis/antithesis: two men attempting to undo salvation-two women providing for

it; monetary profit (tokos as financial gain)-spiritual profit (tokos as divine offspring); barren metal-fruitful womb. The results from the exchanges (culminating on the opposite wall's Last Judgment) are likewise antithetical: Judas's suicide

(death), Christ's redemption (life).55 Aligning two texts (very familiar to Christians of the Middle

Ages) provides an effect similar to the one in the chancel's visual juxtaposition. The first is an imprecation on Judas's betrayal from the Meditationes Vitae Christi, once attributed to Bonaventura: "Woe to you, wretch, hardhearted one! What

you have conceived you will bear" [Sed vae tibi, miser: tu quidem obduratus, quod concepisti, parturies]. And then, one of the most

frequently recited phrases from Luke's Gospel, the exclama- tion of Elizabeth to Mary (from the Ave Maria) asJohn moves in Elizabeth's womb: "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!" [Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui.] (Luke 1:42).56 In word and

image we confront two conceptions-one cursed, one blessed. Both are beyond nature:Judas's unnatural, Mary's supernatu- ral.

The passage from the Meditationes is especially interesting

4 Giotto, Marriage of the Virgin. Arena Chapel (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, New York)

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5 Giotto, Nuptial Procession. Arena Chapel (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, New York)

when we consider the moment represented in the Pact of

Judas. In contrast to almost all other examples of the theme, whereJudas is shown in the act of receiving the thirty pieces of silver from the high priests, here the money has already been

exchanged.57 By this choice, Giotto reinforces the visual

parallels between the Pact and the Visitation, but, more

important, he indicates that the pact has been sealed. As Moshe Barasch has argued, the devil's action, placing his hands on Judas's shoulder, is a legal gesture signifying confirmation of an offer. Interestingly, Barasch states as well


6 Giotto, Visitation. Arena Chapel (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, New York)

that the gesture was also used in ancient wedding ceremonies as a bride was delivered to her groom.58 Both connotations-

legal and marital-are especially apt here, as is the casting of

Judas in the female role. The plot has been conceived, but in a

sense,Judas himself has also conceived, as Mary and Elizabeth

have; both images depict embryonic moments that will

change the course of human history. Judas's suicide, in the Last Judgment (Fig. 8), shows the

fulfillment of the prophecy in the Meditationes: "what you have conceived you will bear" [quod concepisti parturies]. Giotto's depiction of the suicide, like so much here, departs from traditional representations of the theme. The very inclusion of Judas's death is unusual in duecento and early trecento images of the LastJudgment59 significantly, it occurs in the mosaic in the Baptistery in Florence, to which Giotto was much indebted.60 What distinguishes Giotto's version from that in the mosaic is the wayJudas dies: in Florence, he

merely hangs, but in Padua, his viscera spill out of his body. This gruesome image conflates two biblical passages: Matthew

27:5, "And throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself" [Et proiectis argentis in templo, recessit: et abiens laqueo se suspendit], and Acts

1:18, "Now this man bought a field with the reward of his

wickedness; and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out" [Et hic quidem possedit agrum de mercede iniquitatis, et suspensus crepuit medius: et diffusa sunt omnia viscera eius]. Theologians like Peter Comestor similarly conflate the two-usually with a resulting explanation that

Judas's spirit exited perforce from his entrails (not, as convention has it, from the mouth), since his mouth had kissed Christ.61

Despite such texts and similar images in northern Euro-

pean art, Judas's erupting entrails appear only rarely in

7 Giotto, Pact ofJudas. Arena Chapel (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, New York)

duecento and trecento Italy.62 Giotto's choice of this uncommon iconography seems quite deliberate: Judas's belly splits open in a grim inversion of childbirth, the inevitable result of the sinister conception shown on the chancel wall. A pseudony- mous thirteenth-century author (known today as Pseudo-

Bernard) makes the echoes of childbirth quite explicit: "Hanging, he burst in the middle; his venterwas full, and his uter erupted" [Suspensus crepuit medius: plenus erat venter, et

ruptus est uter].63 Pseudo-Bernard repeats Acts 1:18 verbatim

("suspensus crepuit medius") but, finding a wonderful opportunity for paradox and wordplay, continues with venter and uter instead of the biblical viscera. The least complicated understanding of these substituted words would suggest translating them as "belly" and "bag" (referring to Judas's evisceration). But clearly, the coincidence of venter (whose primary religious connotation would be the fructus ventris- "fruitful womb"-of Mary) with uter (whose secondary mean-

ing is anatomical) reflects the author's attempt to conflate suicide with childbirth. Moreover, this metaphorical uter may also suggest an animal-skin money bag-just as Judas's bag suggests an uter in the chancel fresco.64 The author of the Meditationes brings this starkly into the foreground, complet- ing the birth metaphor: Judas bears what he conceived. Thus, the implicit pregnancy ofJudas on the chancel wall becomes

explicit in this influential text.65 Associations ofJudas with a paradoxical, inverse, or unnatu-

ral pregnancy do not originate with the thirteenth century. Two early Christian writers, both widely read in the later Middle Ages, curse the traitor in similar terms; both empha- size the idea of his sterile origins and the emptiness of his

offspring. In Sedulius, from the fifth century, we read: "If only he, condemned to the womb [sterili damnatus uentre] had never known the day of his birth.... "66 Arator, in the sixth

TIE !PROGRAM OF (GIOTTO'S ARENA CHAPEI. IN PAD'A 281

8 Giotto, Last Judgment, detail: Suicide ofJudas (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, New York)

century, describes the appropriateness ofJudas's evisceration and the sterility of the potters' field bought with his blood

money:

His burst bowels fell out, to be buried in no tomb, and his ashes, disappearing into thin air, fled from the world. Nor is this revenge on Judas empty; it denies funeral rites and comes thus as acceptable punishment for an unjust in- come: for although he had lately bought fields with the

price of his death, [and] although the purchased ground with the name of Blood, collocating tombs for foreign ashes, makes the earth fruitful by means of the graves, the

impious one is denied the fertility of his own field, and is alone excluded from the lands which bear sepulchers.67

Giotto's image of Judas in the Last Judgment has a near

contemporary equivalent in the Legenda Aurea-an important source for Giotto in the Joachim and Anna cycle in Padua.

Jacobus de Voragine uses much the same metaphor, stating that Judas has conceived: "It also was fitting that the bowels which had conceived the betrayal should burst and spill out"

[Dignum enim erat, ut viscera, quae proditionem conceperant, rupta caderunt] .68

Crossing over, then, from the vacuity ofJudas's pact to the scene of the Visitation is like moving from impending doom to the promise of salvation. One hardly needs to insist on the medieval importance of Mary as intercessor for the sinner; the devotional literature of the thirteenth century is particularly relevant insofar as it relates Mary's intercessory role with the fecundity of her womb: benedictus fructus ventris tui. In a tour de force on this theme, Bonaventura devotes entire

chapters of his Speculum Mariae Beatae Virginae to the gracious and salvific powers of the Virgin's womb. In one chapter,

entitled "Fructus ventris Beatae Mariae quorum sit, et quibus debeatur," he describes the metaphoric (one might even say mystical) meaning of the womb. It involves, he says, more than simply the physical conception of the Christ child: "The 'fruit' is not simply of the womb, but of the mind" [Fructus

namque iste non solum estfructus ventris, sed etiam mentis] .. The fruit of Mary's womb, it turns out, is the fruit of repentance. It

is, for example, "humility countering pride" and "abstinence

countering gluttony"; for our purposes, it is also "generosity countering avarice":

In the fifth case, friends, let us see how the fruit of Mary is

generosity countering avarice, and especially the generosity of those who, in the name of this fruit, renounce all

temporal things, in accord with this passage from the

Songs: For that fruit a man gives a thousand pieces of silver, "truly by leaving everything behind" says the commentary. And again the gloss says: "For mille 'perfection,' for

argentum 'all things worldly' are understood." Therefore, he who gives up completely all worldly goods for Christ's

sake, he is like one who gives up a thousand pieces of silver for this fruit. But he who refuses to give a thousand, giving up everything, let him give at least something for this fruit, to help the poor; let him be the fruit-bearing olive tree,

bearing the fruit of compassion. Alas, how far from this fruit of compassion (and how far

from those who do not covet earthly things) are the souls of the avaricious! . . . Of them it is said: By the anxiety, wealth, and indulgence in this life, they are choked; they bear no fruit. It is also said in Ecclesiastes: He who loves wealth, will not grasp its

fruit. Thus, this blessed fruit is of the generous and of those who renounce temporal things; and Mary herself above all

282 ART BUILLETIN JUNE 1998 V()OLUME I.XXX NUBER 2

9 Giotto, Charity. Arena Chapel (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, New York)

humanity is the most deserving of this fruit-for she is above all in contempt of the temporal, and is the most

generous, as testified by blessed Bernard, who says: "Any honor Mary may have had among people, any earthly thing she could have had from her father's house, all such

possibilities were like dung to her, for she made profit from Christ [Christum lucrifaceret]."70

This passage, with its promise of salvation for the formerly avaricious through the fruit of Mary's womb, surely would have offered hope to a man like Enrico. The theologian Remigio of Florence, writing in a different vein (a treatise on

usury rather than a devotional tract), juxtaposes Mary's fruitful womb not merely with avarice but more specifically

with usury; he, too, evokes the words of Elizabeth to Mary at the Visitation. After a lengthy discussion of usury as "against nature," Remigio argues that "many things that are shown to come into existence against nature are nevertheless in truth

good. For the Virgin Mary, remaining a virgin, against nature

brought forth her sonJesus and bore fruit, which was in truth her son and the blessed fruit of her womb."71

The opposition of fertility and usury, implicit on the chancel wall, recurs elsewhere in the chapel. For instance, at the dado level, which features Virtues on the south wall and Vices on the north wall, the personifications of Charity and

Envy can be similarly interpreted. Charity is strikingly fecund

(Fig. 9). Crowned with roses, she holds a bowl laden with nature's bounty: lilies, roses, poppies, corn, pomegranates, and wheat. This characterization of Charity is again somewhat

unusual; earlier Italian depictions of this virtue do not

consistently associate it with fertility.72 Her opposition to

cupidity is explicit, as several scholars have observed: the pile of money bags at her feet makes her contempt clear. The link with the grasping Envy, clutching a money bag similar to

Judas's, is clear as well. Usury was viewed as sin against charity in scholastic thought,73 and the chapel's dedication to Santa Maria della Carita signals the importance of this virtue for Enrico Scrovegni. Bellinati has argued that many of the saints on the walls of the chapel are also associated with charity.74

Giotto uses other narrative strategies to contrast the fertility of the virtuous with the cupidity of the sinner. The treacher- ous kiss by which Judas betrays Christ (Fig. 10) echoes the tender embrace ofJoachim and Anna (Fig. 11), traditionally understood as the moment of Mary's conception.75 The two moods could not be more distinct. Judas, his robe nearly engulfing the figure of Christ, stares up into the eyes of a saddened Christ, and the betrayer's lips are pursed in an

unseemly eroticism; Joachim and Anna, in a stance that

conveys mutuality, are depicted as if their two bodies and faces had become "one flesh." The archway above Joachim and Anna suggests their perfect union; the weapons in the Betrayal

of Christ seem to speak of disarray and impending destruction.

Integrity and disintegration: the two scenes are visually connected by way of the kiss. Significantly, Joachim and Anna's kiss, so familiar to art historians, in fact represents a

departure from earlier textual and visual accounts of the

Meeting at the Golden Gate. The Legenda Aurea, widely cited as Giotto's source for this portion of the fresco cycle, makes no mention of a kiss, stating only thatJoachim and Anna "met as the angel predicted, and were happy to see each other."76 Nor was an explicit kiss typically depicted in Western versions of the theme; a discreet embrace is far more common.77 Just as the inclusion of the kiss in the Meeting at the Golden Gate is

unusual, so is the representation of the kiss in the Betrayal. Here Giotto departs from traditional iconography by depicting not only Judas but also Christ in profile, recalling the

positions ofJoachim and Anna, and suggesting thatJudas will kiss Christ on the mouth, asJoachim kisses Anna. Had Giotto

represented Christ in the conventional three-quarter view, seen in virtually every late medieval Italian example of the

scene, the visual parallel between the two pairs would have been less striking.78 In both images, then, Giotto has manipu- lated the standard iconographic rendering, thereby reinforc-

TIlE PR(OGRA:M OF (;IOTTO'S ARENA CH(APE.I IN PADUA 283

10 Giotto, Betrayal of Christ. Arena Chapel (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, New York)

11 Giotto, Meeting at the Golden Gate. Arena Chapel (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, New York)

284 ART BUL'.I.ETIN JUNE 1998 VO()UME I.XXX NU'MBER 2

12 Giotto, LastJudgment, detail: Satan (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, New York)

13 Last Judgment, detail: Satan. Florence, Baptistery, ca. 1270-80 (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, New York)

ing the visual links between the two to establish an antithetical

pair. The usury/fertility imagery is perhaps most graphic in the

fresco of the Last Judgment (Fig. 2). Besides the numerous references to avarice, which many writers have observed, we also find diabolical inversions of fecundity. Consider Giotto's

noticeably corpulent Satan (Fig. 12), whose swollen abdomen contrasts with the slender torso of Satan in the mosaic in the

Baptistery in Florence (Fig. 13), to which Giotto is otherwise

greatly indebted. Satan's bloated belly here seems a kind of

perverse evocation of pregnancy. Still more explicit is the sinner emerging headfirst from an orifice between Satan's

legs in an infernal parody of childbirth; nothing like this

appears in the Florence Baptistery or in other major monuments of the late duecento.7T' This parturient Satan forcibly recalls Alexander Bonini's description of usury: "money ...

reproduces itself as if by impregnation and birth." The emphasis on sexuality in the Arena Last Judgment,

especially in the far right portion of the scene (Figs. 12, 14, 15, 16), also distinguishes this fresco from earlier works, such as

the Baptistery mosaic.80 To the right of Satan's head, a man hands a bag of money to a woman, presumably in exchange for sexual favors (Fig. 14); the exchange suggests prostitution, which was specifically associated with usury.8l The damned in this section suffer sexual torments that are especially graphic: near Satan's left hip, a scaly green monster gnaws on one man's penis (Figs. 12, 15); above them, a black demon grabs another man's genitals in pincers (Figs. 14, 16); hanging to the right are four of the damned, two of whom-one male, one female-are suspended by their genitals (Fig. 14). These

particular forms of torture-surely visual versions of Dantean

contrappasso-are especially apt here. They recall Remigio's comparison of usury with sodomy and anticipate Dante's

consigning of sodomites and usurers to the same space.82

The Flowering Rod: Enrico's Spiritual Increase At this point we return to Enrico Scrovegni to consider more

closely the possible meanings of the chapel for Enrico and his

family. Though the chapel has been rightly understood as a

penitential offering, the parallels between Enrico and Joachim bear examining. Joachim is presented here as a rich man shunned by his community for his perceived sins. His abase- ment grows with every scene: he recoils at the high priest's rejection; stands before his shepherds with eyes downcast; crouches on hands and knees to tend his sacrificial fire; and

finally sinks to the ground to sleep. This pronounced emphasis onJoachim's humility appears in no earlier Italian representation of the cycle. In a panel in Pisa from the 1280s or 1290s,

Joachim is shown fully upright in almost every one of the

eight narratives in which he appears.83 Giotto's Sacrifice of Joachim, an especially poignant image of a rich man brought low, contrasts sharply with the Pisan version of the same scene, where he stands erect before an altar to present his offering. In the Arena fresco, the acceptance of Joachim's sacrifice, indicated by the gesture of the angel and the hand of God

above, anticipates the acceptance of Enrico's offering, de-

picted in the Last Judgment to the left of the cross. Interest-

ingly, this episode is mentioned nowhere in the Legenda Aurea, the presumed source of the Joachim cycle.84

Mary Magdalene, the very embodiment of the penitent sinner, also figures significantly in the chapel. As with Joachim, her stance signals her humility: she falls before Christ in the

Raising of Lazarus (Fig. 17), caresses his feet in the Lamenta- tion, and prostrates herself again in the Noli me tangere. She is found as well in the Crucifixion (Fig. 18), at the foot of the cross-a placement familiar for Saint Francis, but very rare for the Magdalene in Italian art of the late duecento and

beginning of the trecento.85 Still more pointedly, she is shown

wiping Christ's feet with her hair, a gesture that powerfully evokes her repentance in the house of Ievi. Given the close association of usurers and prostitutes, her central role here- with her redemption assured, her past forgiven-must have been reassuring to Enrico.

Conversion is, in Dante's words, "la vita nuova," a new life.

Conception and fertility have long had associations with

spiritual development; birth is the equivalent of conversion. As Amy Neff has shown, Anthony of Padua creates an extended metaphor of conception and birth to explain the

process of conversion. Anthony describes the culminating

'T1 PR(OGRAM OF (;I(OTO'S .ARENA (:11HAPI IN IA\t \A285

14 Giotto, Last Judgment, detail: the damned

16 Giotto, Last Judgment, detail: one of the damnled 15 Giotto, Last Judgment, detail: one of the damned

moment: "The hour of birth for a woman is the hour of confession for the penitent soul in which the soul must be sorrowful, expressing bitter groans, and saying with the

prophet: 'I have labored hard in my grief.' "86

Not only the labor, but its fruit (birth and infancy) is a

strikingly insistent concern in the program. The Birth of the Virgin and the Nativity are, of course, logical inclusions in a

cycle that treats the story of Joachim and Anna and the

infancy of Christ. But beyond literal births mandated by the narrative, there are several images that suggest metaphoric birth. To the left below Enrico's feet in the LastJudgment (Fig.

2), ten nude figures, facially adult but diminutive in form, emerge from fissures in the earth to their new lives in eternity. Elsewhere, lion whelps in the quatrefoil adjoining the Resurrec- tion (and, of course, iconographically associated with it) lie in a cave which suggests their recent birth. Finally, as Millard Meiss observed, numerous children are present throughout the fresco program: in addition to their necessary inclusion in the two Infancy cycles (of the Virgin and Christ), children

appear in the Ministry cycle: in the Expulsion of the Merchants, the Raising ofLazarus, and the Entry intoJerusalem. In one case, the Expulsion, Meiss finds the presence of children "unprec-

286 ART BUI.ILETIN JUNE 1998 VO()IUME I.XXX NUMBER 2

17 Giotto, Raising of Lazarus. Arena Chapel (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, New York)

18 Giotto, Crucifixion. Arena Chapel (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, New York)

edented."87 The unusual emphasis on children here-vivid reminders of fertility-may represent a counterpoint to the

family profession. More broadly, much of the chapel's imagery focuses on the

movement from death to life, from enclosure to release. The three frescoes depicting the Lamentation, Resurrection, and Ascension enact this movement on the grand scale of salvation

history. Giotto moves the eyes from the horizontal, earth- bound Lamentation to the aerial and unanchored Ascension. But a more personalized moment of transformation occurs in the Lazarus scene (Fig. 17). Giotto has accomplished here what Dante scholars describe as the poet's "figural realism." The human drama unfolds (as it usually does in Giotto) with

great expressiveness. The corpse come to life is depicted in

realistically muted tones; the mourners are overwhelmed by the corpse's stench. Even the eyes of Lazarus seem to be

realistically half opened, on the verge of a new consciousness. But when we look at the shroud wrappings, mentally juxtapos- ing this image with the swaddling of the infants in the narratives above and across from Lazarus, for example, in the Birth of the Virgin, and when we compare the cave of Lazarus with the cave of the lion-whelps (mindful of their resurrection

echoes), many other meanings unfold. These, and many other connections, imply an allegory of spiritual rebirth, a theme that was probably resonant in Enrico Scrovegni's life. More than a convenient metaphor, fertility and birth would

represent a doubly pertinent response to usury for a man in Enrico's position.

Finally, the two small chambers just below the Pact of Judas and the Visitation, which are generally interpreted as burial

chapels, are aptly placed (Fig. 1). Schlegel astutely described them as "symbols of the eternal rest the donor hoped to

gain."88 Their significance for Enrico may have been still more pointed. Usurers had been denied Christian burial by the Third Lateran Council (1179); thus, late medieval preach- ers told tales of usurers' bodies moldering, their bones

stripped bare by animals.89 Enrico's decisions to build a

private chapel and to have these tombs painted may have been prompted, in part, by his fears of suffering a similar fate; his anxieties are palpable in his will, which discusses his final burial place at great length. The will is absolute in its insistence that the chapel should be his final resting place.90 Though his tomb is now in a room off the chancel, originally it may have been in a niche to the right of the arch beneath the Visitation, as Irene Hueck has argued.:'

A Family in Judgment The Arena Chapel undoubtedly spoke to more than one audience. Though the episcopal concession apparently allowed only for a small family oratory, Enrico clearly had a broader audience in mind. As early as 1304, Pope Benedict XI offered indulgences to those who "visit the chapel in the spirit of humility . . . having confessed and being fully penitent."'92 Less than a year later, the neighboring monks of the Eremi- tani registered their complaint about the scope of Enrico's

project, insisting that "people ought not to frequent this church."93

Scholars have generally assumed that at least part of Enrico's intention was to launder the family's reputation (and

possibly his own). In fact, Bernardino Scardeone's sixteenth-

century perspective on Enrico demonstrates that the chapel's effect on his Paduan reputation was quite positive and long lasting.94 We would not dispute the possibility that his inten- tions were, to some extent, self-serving, but neither would we dismiss the contrary, that is, the sincerity of his motives.

Moreover, many facts converge that support (or at least

imply) the sincerity of his repentance: his father's death, the

purchase of the Arena property, and the presumed end of his lucrative profession-all in the year of Jubilee.'95

The chapel, then, is a convergence of the public and

private, the civic and familial. Although several times during the liturgical year, the chapel would have been open to the

public, Enrico and his family would have been the principal


communicants at mass.96 The chapel inevitably addresses the

Scrovegni themselves. Enrico's family at this point included his mother, Cappellina, his unnamed wife (the daughter of Bonifacio da Carrara), and at least some of his four daughters. Though we do not know the precise dates, Benjamin Kohl has estimated that they were born between 1300 and 1310-the decade during which the chapel was constructed and decorated.97

In view of the chapel's recurring images of fertility, and of the central metaphor of (female) fecundity as antidote to

(male) usury, and the birth of Enrico's own children in those

years, we wonder about a more specific role for Enrico's wife in his redemption. As Le Goff has shown, wives of usurers bore a heavy burden in late medieval society. Le Goff

expresses it succinctly: "The wife plays a major role in all matters relating to the usurer's eternal fate. She must strive to

persuade him to renounce this cursed trade and to return the

money that will doom him to Hell."98 He cites numerous

exempla that make the responsibilities of usurers' wives quite clear. Dutiful wives' obligations, moreover, continued even after the death of their sinful spouses: through assiduous

prayer, widows might ensure their husbands' salvation.99 The recurrent images of women attending to beloved family members-in life (the Birth of the Virgin, the Nativity, the Flight into Egypt) and especially in death (the Raising of Lazarus, the

Crucifixion, the Lamentation)-may have been intended as visual exempla for Enrico's wife and family after his own death. In particular, the Lamentation departs from conventional iconography in that mourning women entirely sur- round Christ, displacing Saint John, who traditionally clasps Christ's hand. Moreover, women are shown as powerful intercessors: Mary Magdalene and Martha entreat Christ to raise their brother in the Raising of Lazarus (Fig. 17); Mary instructs her son to transform water into wine at Cana. The

LastJudgment (Fig. 2) epitomizes this role for women; as Shorr has noted, the Arena fresco is most unusual in emphasizing Mary's part in salvation.l00 She appears twice: first at the head of the elect, whom she escorts to paradise; then, flanked by two figures, she receives the model of the chapel from Enrico.101

It is true, of course, that we would expect a chapel dedicated to Mary to accord her a prominent place in the decorative program. It is likewise logical that Mary Magda- lene, as a standard penitential figure, would also play an

important role, given the Scrovegni family's history. But these

images may have had a particular resonance for the women in the family, and it is interesting that an early document

specifically mentions Enrico's "wife, his mother, and his

family" as those for whom the chapel was intended. The imagination of the Middle Ages found it possible

(indeed, likely) that the local has its model in the universal, that personal history and salvation history sometimes follow the same trajectory. This alignment of the personal and the universal is clearly evident in the prominence of the scene

depicting Enrico's presentation of the chapel in the Last

Judgment. Given the context of expiation and conversion, Enrico's presence in the lower center of the Last Judgment likely reflects a recognition of how his family had been, and would be, judged. Directly opposite this presentation scene is

the chancel arch's division of barren metal and the fruitful womb.

It is possible, then, to see the women of Enrico's family as emblems of his movement from spiritual barrenness to a fruitful conversion and as intermediaries in effecting his own salvation. Given Enrico's history and the understanding of

usury in late medieval Italy, we suspect that he found great comfort in the images in his chapel, and in the knowledge that it would be his final resting place.

Anne Derbes is an art historian who works on narrative painting in medieval art. Mark Sandona is a specialist in comparative literature whose research concerns the iconography of moral abstraction in the Renaissance. They are continuing their collaboration on the Arena

Chapel [Art Department, Hood College; English Department, Hood

College, Frederick, Md. 21701].

Frequently Cited Sources

Basile, Giuseppe, Giotto: La Cappella degli Scrovegni (Milan: Electa, 1992). Bellinati, Claudio, La Cappella di Giotto all'Arena (1300-1306) (Padua [n.p.],

1967). Bonaventura, Opera omnia, ed. Adolpho Carolo Peltier, 15 vols. (Paris:

Ludovicus Vives, 1864-71). Borsook, Eve, The Mural Painters of Tuscany from Cimabue to Andrea del Sarto, 2d

ed., rev. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980). Hyde, John Kenneth, Padua in the Age of Dante (Manchester: Manchester

University Press, 1966). Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saint, trans. W. G. Ryan,

2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). Kohl, Benjamin, "The Scrovegni in Carrara Padua: And Enrico's Will," Apollo

142 (Dec. 1995): 43-47. Langholm, Odd, 1984, TheAristotelian Analysis of Usury (Bergen: Universitetfor-

laget). , 1992, Economics in the Medieval Schools: Wealth, Exchange, Value, Money,

and Usury according to the Paris Theological Tradition, 1200-1350 (Leiden: Brill).

Le Goff, Jacques, 1979, "The Usurer and Purgatory," in The Dawn of Modern Banking, Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, University of California, Los Angeles (New Haven: Yale University Press), 25-52.

, 1990, Your Money or Your Life: Economy and Religion in the Middle Ages (New York: Zone Books).

Noonan, John T., The Scholastic Analysis of Usury (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957).

Schlegel, Ursula, "On the Picture Program of the Arena Chapel" (1957), in Stubblebine, 182-202.

Schorr, Dorothy C., "The Role of the Virgin in Giotto's LastJudgment" (1956), in Stubblebine, 169-82.

Singleton, Charles S., ed. and trans., The Divine Comedy, vol. 1, Inferno, pt. 2, Commentary, Bollingen Series, vol. 80 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970).

Stubblebine, James, Giotto: The Arena Chapel Frescoes (New York: W.W. Norton, 1969).

Notes This article had its origins in a course we taught last spring entitled "Dante and Giotto." We would like to thank the Honors Program at Hood College for making this team-taught venture possible, and we thank the students in the course for their enthusiastic contributions to discussion. We are also grateful for the encouragement of students, alumnae, and friends who joined us on our trip to Italy this summer. Thanks especially to Julia Miller, our traveling companion, for her insightful comments and careful reading of a draft; to John Paoletti and Gary Radke for their gracious hospitality in Florence; and to John Paoletti for his astute editorial advice. Many thanks also to Joanna Cannon, Grace Mary Oates, Wallace Oates, and Diane Wolfthal for reading the manuscript and offering valuable suggestions; to Benjamin Kohl for sharing his expertise on the Scrovegni family; and to Amy Neff, Jeffrey Ruda,


Sharon Strocchia, and Carol Symes for their assistance. We are indebted to the Folger Shakespeare Library and to the Newberry Library for allowing us access to their collections. Finally, we thank the anonymous readers for the Art Bulletin; we are particularly grateful for the generous comments of the reader who independently reached similar conclusions about the program of the Arena Chapel. Unless otherwise specified, translations are ours.

1. Thomas Aquinas, In VIII libros Politicorum expositio, I, lect. 8, n. 134, in Opera Omnia, vol. 26 (Paris: Ludovicus Virus, 1875), 127, trans. in Singleton, 182.

2. Bonaventura, Meditationes Vitae Christi, in Opera omnia, ed. Adolpho Carolo Peltier, 15 vols. (Paris: Ludovicus Vives, 1864-71), vol. 10, 597, trans. in Isa Ragusa and Rosalie Green, Meditations on the Life of Christ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 313; though this text was formerly ascribed to Saint Bonaventura, it is today attributed to an anonymous Franciscan writing toward the end of the thirteenth century.

3. This particular vantage point is underlined by Pietro Toesca, who maintains that the mysterious "coretti" below the chancel arch define a strategic vantage point for viewing the chancel frescoes. See Basile, 271.

4. The literature on the Arena Chapel is vast; see Basile for bibliography. For the documents regarding the chapel, see Bellinati; for English translations of some of the most important documents, see Stubblebine, 103-11.

5. The phrase appears in the complaint lodged by Enrico's neighbors, the Eremitani monks, to the bishop of Padua on January 9, 1305; unhappy about the scale of the chapel, the recently erected bell tower, and the general display of "pomp, vainglory and wealth" at the site, the monks quote the "then Lord Bishop of Padua" as granting to Enrico the right to construct "a small church, almost in the manner of an oratory, for himself, his wife, his mother and his family" (quoted in Stubblebine, 107). For the location of Enrico's tomb in the chapel, see Irene Hueck, "Zu Enrico Scrovegnis Veriinderungen der Arena- kapelle," Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 17 (1973): 277-94, esp. 282-86. For the church as a funerary chapel, see the observations of Basile, 13; see also nn. 90, 91 below.

6. For the document recording the purchase of the land, see Stubblebine, 103-4. The date of the dedication of the church appeared on an inscription recorded by the 16th-century chronicler Bernardino Scardeone, De Antiquitate urbis Patavii & claris civibus Patavinis (Basel, 1560), 332-33. We thank the Folger Shakespeare Library for granting us access to this text.

7. Shorr, esp. 171-73, interprets the chapel as both S. Maria Annunziata and S. Maria della Carita. For questions about the earlier church on the site, see Borsook, 7. For the document of 1304, see Stubblebine, 105.

8. Schlegel, 182-202. Cesare Foligno, The Story of Padua (London: J. M. Dent, 1910), 279, had earlier linked the fresco of Judas and the high priests with Reginaldo's usurious practices. Usurers often sought redemption by making large donations to the Church; see F. L. Galassi, "Buying a Passport to Heaven: Usury, Restitution, and the Merchants of Medieval Genoa," Religion 22 (1992): 313-26; Le Goff, 1979. Robert Rough proposed, moreover, that Enrico was a member of the order known as the Cavalieri Gaudenti, which espoused the extirpation of usury; although Rough's article is problematic, he correctly reaffirmed the importance of usury in the program of the chapel, in "Enrico Scrovegni, the Cavalieri Gaudenti, and the Arena Chapel in Padua," Art Bulletin 62, no. 1 (1980): 24-35. For some of the questionable aspects of Rough's article, see Robin Simon, "Not the Cavalieri Gaudenti," an appendix to his article "Altars and Altarpieces at the Arena Chapel, Padua," Apollo 142 (Dec. 1995): 24-36, esp. 36. Simon rightly questions the reliability of Giovanni da Nono, the 14th-century chronicler who asserts that the Cavalieri were cosponsors of the chapel and that Enrico renounced his ties to the order not long after the chapel's completion, in Liber de Generatione Aliquorum Civium Urbis Padue, Padua, Seminario Padua, ms 11, fols. 43v-44r. As John Kenneth Hyde points out (189), da Nono hated the Scrovegni family; his testimony is therefore not entirely trustworthy. On da Nono, see also Hyde, Literacy and Its Uses: Studies on Late Medieval Italy (Manchester, Eng.: Manchester University Press, 1993); G. Fabris, "La cronaca di Giovanni da Nono," Bollettino del Museo Civico di Padova, n.s., 8 (1932): 1-33 and 9 (1933): 167-209. Rough's other source is a late-18th-century historian of the Cavalieri, Domenico Federici, who is clearly interested in promoting the order's claim to the chapel. We might add that da Nono could not have chosen a more tainted group to link with Enrico: the very name Cavalieri Gaudenti was a term of derision for a band known more for tax evasion than for pious acts. By the turn of the 14th century, the group-which carried the official name Ordo Militae Beatae Mariae-had already acquired a reputation for hypocrisy. Dante mocks them mercilessly in canto 23 of the Inferno; Singleton, in his commentary on the poem (399-400), explains: "The nickname Frati Gaudenti, which was in common use (as is proved by documentary evidence) within ten years of the foundation of the order, reputedly was bestowed upon the knights because of the laxity of their rules, which permitted them to marry and to live in their own homes, and merely required them to abstain from the use of gold and silver trappings, from attending secular banquets, and from encouraging actors." He goes on to quote the chronicler Giovanni Villani, who speaks of how quickly they cashed in on their ideals: "Ma poco duro, che seguiro al nome il fatto, cioe, d'intendere piu a godere che ad altro" (In a short time, their actions followed their name-they were more concerned with a good time than with anything else), Cronica, VII, 13.

9. For the Expulsion of the Merchants, see Leonetto Tintori and Millard Meiss, "Observations on the Arena Chapel and Santa Croce," in Stubblebine,

208-12; they note that Giotto did not include the money changers often seen in versions of this scene and suggest a "diminution of references to money" in view of Reginaldo's infamy as a moneylender (209). On the other hand, they do acknowledge the rarity of the scene and the prominence of the money bags in the Last Judgment and in the personification of Charity (209-10). Many scholars, however, interpret the scene as another reference to the family's usurious past; see, for instance, Stubblebine, 85; Borsook, 8-9; Moshe Barasch, Giotto and the Language of Gesture, Cambridge Studies in the History of Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 155.

10. Hyde, for instance, states (190), "Enrico Scrovegni's building of the famous Arena Chapel... may have been intended in part to expiate the sins of his father, but there is nothing to suggest this." Bruce Cole is also skeptical: "Although scenes of commerce and money and the depiction of money bags (in The Cleansing of the Temple, in The Pact of Judas, and in The Last Judgment) appear in the chapel, they are simply parts of the canonical sequence of the Christian drama without, as far as one can see, any specific reference to contemporary usury. Why, in any case, would Enrico Scrovegni want to call attention to this dubious family activity?"; Cole, Giotto: The Scrovegni Chapel, Padua (New York: George Braziller, 1993), 35 n. 1. For similar doubts, see Selma Pfieffenberger, "The Iconography of Giotto's Virtues and Vices at Padua," Ph.D. diss., Bryn Mawr College, 1966, chap. 2, 2:4.

11. For Remigio, lector at S. Maria Novella for more than forty years and a possible teacher of Dante, see Langholm, 1992, 457-70; Ovidio Capitani, "II 'De Peccato Usure' di Remigio de' Girolami," Studi Medievali, 3d ser., 6, no. 2 (1965): 536-662. Capitani's introduction (536-610) is followed by the full text of the tract (611-62). For the dates of the tract, begun ca. 1305 and completed by 1317, see Capitani, 555. The passage, from chap. 14 (Capitani, 634) reads, "Unde proditur est et peior quam fueritJudas, quantum ad aliquid, quia de eo legitur Mt. XXVII quod penitentia ductus retulit triginta denarios. Set usurarius quando venit ad penitentiam, non vult restituere, set dicet 'dimitta- mus modo de usura, dicamus de aliis peccatis' " (Thus he [the usurer] is a traitor, and even worse thanJudas was, as evil as any, because, as we read in Mt. XXVII, Judas, led by penitence, gave back the thirty pieces of silver. But the usurer, when he comes to penitence, does not want to make restitution, but says, "Let us just dismiss usury, let us give up other sins"). Ludolph of Saxony (d. 1377) similarly writes, "Then Judas ... with a repentance which was unfruitful, because without the hope of forgiveness, 'brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priest and ancients.' ... If, then, Judas brought back his ill-gotten gains, how can the usurer keep his usury? ... [He] 'went and hanged himself,' ... in a fit of desperation, so that his covetousness brought him no profit. ... And it may be said that those who will not ask forgiveness and set about making satisfaction are companions of Judas in his self-destruction," The Hours of the Passion, Taken from the Life of Christ (London: Burns and Oats, 1887), 140-43.

12. For personifications of Avaritia and Usura, see P. Bauman, "The Deadliest Sin: Warnings against Avarice and Usury on Romanesque Capitals in Auvergne," Church History 12 (1990): 7-18, esp. 9-10. For another instance of a personification of Usura, in the console of the lintel over the west portal of the cathedral of Piacenza, see Adolf Katzenellenbogen, Allegories of the Virtues and Vices in MedievalArt from Early Christian Times to the Thirteenth Century (1939; repr. Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching, vol. 24, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 54 n. 1.

13. See, for instance, Thomas of Chobham, Summa confessorum, 504, quoted in Le Goff, 1990, 27: "There are two detestable sorts of avaritia punishable by a judicial verdict: usury and simony."

14. For this exemplum, in which a usurer on his deathbed places money in a bag attached to his neck, see Thomas F Crane, ed., The Exempla or Illustrative Stories from the Sermones Vulgares of Jacques de Vitry (London: Folklore Society, 1890), no. 168; Le Goff, 1979, 41.

15. "... but I observed / that around each sinner's neck a pouch was hung, / each of a different color, with a coat of arms, / and fixed on these they seemed to feast their eyes.... / And one who had a blue sow, pregnant looking, / stamped on the whiteness of his moneybag / asked me: 'What are you doing in this pit?" canto 17, lines 54-57, 64-66, Mark Musa, trans., The Divine Comedy: Inferno (New York: Penguin Books, 1971). Illustrated copies of the Commedia from the 14th century depict the usurers with large bags around their necks; see Peter Brieger, Millard Meiss, and Charles Singleton, Illumi- nated Manuscripts of the "Divine Comedy, "Bollingen Series, vol. 81 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), vol. 2, figs. 195b, 196b, 197a, c, 198a, b, 200b.

16. For the 5th-century Eiciens, formerly attributed to Saint John Chrysos- tom, see Langholm, 1984, 71 (the source of this translation). The text is a homily on Matt. 21:12-13, which describes Christ evicting ("eiciens") the merchants from the temple. For the importance of the Eiciens for later commentators, see Noonan, 38; he notes its "immense influence." For the passage in Remigio, see Langholm, 1992, 463. The passage, from chap. 19 of De peccato usure, reads: "Unde usurariis dixit dominus Mt. XXI 'Vos autem fecistis iliam speluncam latronum,' " Capitani (as in n. 11), 642.

17. For documents implicating Enrico in usury, see Hyde, 188. For the assumption that only Reginaldo practiced usury, see, for instance, Rough (as in n. 8), 24; Charles Harrison, "The Arena Chapel: Patronage and Author- ship," in Siena, Florence and Padua: Art, Society and Religion 1280-1400, ed. Diana Norman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), vol. 2, 38-105, esp. 88. Scardeone (as in n. 6) is one source of this misconception; he claims that


Reginaldo, by the grace of God, was "readily led to repentance for his usury" [praestare ductus poenitentia usurarum], whereas his description of Enrico's motive for constructing the chapel is very generous: "led by piety, in order to pluck the soul of the father from the torments of purgatory, and to expiate his [father's] sins, he built the beautiful temple in Arena" [pietate ductus, pro eripienda patris anima d poenis purgationis, & ad illius expianda peccata phanum pulcherimum aedificavit in Arena]; in essence, he absolves Enrico of any complicity in the usury. The notion of Enrico as the virtuous son of the usurious Reginaldo surfaces again in the Libro della nobiltd di Padova (1884), which stated that Enrico had the chapel built "for the soul of the father, Reginaldo"; Gerolamo Biscaro, "Dante e il buon Gherardo," Studi Medievali, n.s., 1 (1928): 74-113, 86 n. 3). See also Basile, 19 n. 14.

18. Hyde, 188. 19. Though Borsook (8) gives the date of Reginaldo's death as 1289, this

cannot be correct; Hyde (188) cites documents that record Reginaldo's loans as late as 1297. Benjamin Kohl's extensive genealogical table places his death at 1300; Kohl, 45. On the genealogy of the Scrovegni family, see also Alessandro de Marchi, ed., Cenni storici sullefamiglie di Padova (Padua: Minerva, 1842). We thank Rhonda Frevert, reference librarian at the Newberry Library in Chicago, for granting us access to this volume. For the later history of the Scrovegni, see Kohl's forthcoming study, Padua under the Carrara, 1318-1405 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). We are grateful to Professor Kohl for making portions of his book available to us in typescript.

20. Vivid examples of these have been collected by Le Goff, 1990; see esp. chap. 4, "Death and the Usurer." Le Goff notes in particular the danger of sudden death for the usurer (58-59)-a fear that may have gripped Enrico in the wake of his father's death.

21. Despite all his measures to ensure his salvation, fears about his fate continued to plague Enrico: his will, written in 1336, records considerable concern about the return of his "ill-gotten gains"; see Kohl, 45. Basile (19 n. 14) suggests that this phrase is formulaic, but Galassi (as in n. 8), in his study of 177 testaments in Genoa, 1186-1226, notes (317), "in no will is there any expression which indicates the testator's desire to effect restitution of usurious gains, even when clear evidence that the testator was lending at usurious rates exists."

22. Indeed, the temporal structure of Dante's Divine Comedy (in which conversion is a central theme) has Easter of the year 1300 as its center.

23. Villiani, VIII, 36, quoted in Singleton, 314-15. 24. Schlegel's source here is Scardeone, who claimed that the pope granted

absolution to Reginaldo; as Schlegel observes (185), his dates are unreliable. The pope was, however, apparently a friend of Enrico; according to the Libro della nobiltd di Padova, Enrico visited him in Rome in 1302, the year before his election to the papacy (see Borsook, 7). Furthermore, 13th-century peniten- tials stipulate donations to religious houses as appropriate penance for usurers; Robert of Flamborough, Liber Penitentialis: A Critical Edition, ed. J. J. Francis Firth (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1971), 193. Whatever the precise circumstances, the construction and endowment of the chapel was, as Benjamin Kohl has observed (personal correspondence), "the central event in Enrico's life."

25. This understanding of usury persists well into the Renaissance and even into the 20th century. Shakespeare's Antonio confronts Shylock with the accusation of breeding barren metal (Merchant of Venice, 1.3.60-130); and throughout the first seventeen sonnets, Shakespeare refers to the narcissistic young man of his address as, for example, a "profitless usurer" (4.7) because the young man will not marry and procreate. In his essay "Of Usurie" Francis Bacon acknowledges and rejects the claim that the practice is unnatural. Ezra Pound devotes an entire canto to its interference with Nature: "Usura slayeth the child in the womb / It stayeth the young man's courting / It hath brought palsy to bed, lyeth / between the young bride and her bridegroom / CONTRA NATURAM," Canto XLV For a broader psychological and cultural reading of this phenomenon, see Marc Shell, Money, Language and Thought (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982).

26. Langholm, 1992, 265. 27. Gratian, Corpus iuris canonici, I. 47. 8, ed. Emil A. Friedberg, 2 vols.

(Leipzig: Bernard Tauchnitz, 1879-81). vol. 1, col. 171: "Interdum etiam usurae arte nequissima ex ipso auro aurum nascitur. Sed nec sacietas unquam, nec finis aderit cupiditati. Sed ait: quid iniustum est, si cum aliena non inuadam, propria diligentius seruo? 0 inpudens dictu! Propria dicis? que? ex quibus reconditis in hunc mundum detulisti? Quando in hanc ingressus es lucem, quando de uentre matris existi, quibus queso facultatibus quibusque subsidiis stipatus ingressus es?" See also Langholm, 1984, 54.

28. See T. P. McLaughlin, "The Teaching of the Canonists on Usury (XII, XIII, and XIV Centuries)," Medieval Studies 1 (1939): 81-147; Noonan, 38-57; Langholm, 1984, 54-69.

29. Noonan, 45. 30. Thomas Aquinas, quoted in ibid., 53-54. 31. Langholm, 1992, 237. 32. For Aegidius Romanus, see Noonan, 58-59; for Giles, ibid., 62; for

Bonini, ibid., 63-64. For Bonini (also known as Alexander of Alessandria), see also Langholm, 1992, 430-46.

33. There are additionally biblical admonitions against usury in both the Old and New Testaments. See, for instance, Leviticus 25:35-37, Psalms 15:5, and Luke 6:35; see also Alexander Gray, TheDevelopment ofEconomic Doctrine: An Introductory Survey (London: Longman, Green, 1931), 54-59; Le Goff, 1990,

21-23. We are grateful to Wallace Oates for his generous help with these points.

34. Alexander Bonini, Un traite de morale economique au XIVe siecle: Le tractatus de usuris de maitre Alexandre d'Alexandrie, ed. A.-M. Hamelin (Louvain: Nau- welaerts, 1962), 181. See also Langholm, 1992, 439. Capitani (as in n. 11), 557, dates Bonini's tract ca. 1303-7.

35. For Remigio's association of usury with sodomy, see Langholm, 1992, 464 n. 71; for the passage in Depeccato usure, see Capitani (as in n. 11), 611-13.

36. Dante, Inferno, canto 11, lines 49-50, in Musa (as in n. 15). 37. Singleton, 171-72. 38. For references to the three, see Le Goff, 1979, 35; for the passage from

Thomas of Chobham, see Le Goff, 1990, 50. Thomas also refers to the usurer's "incorrigible spiritual fornification"; Le Goff, 1990, 81. For Thomas and Robert of Courcon, see also Langholm, 1992, chap. 2.

39. See Le Goff, 1990, esp. chap. 3, "The Thief of Time." 40. Robert of Flamborough (as in n. 24), 193-94. 41. For the study of law at the University of Padua, see A. Garcia y Garcia,

"The Faculties of Law," in A History of the University in Europe, ed. W. Rfiegg, vol. 1, Universities in the Middle Ages, ed. Hilde de Ridder-Symoens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 388-408, esp. 389-90; for Gratian as a basic legal text of medieval universities, see Garcia y Garcia, 393. For Gratian's thought and the Arena Chapel, see Jonathan Riess, "Justice and Common Good in Giotto's Arena Chapel Frescoes," Arte Cristiana 62 (1984): 69-80.

42. N. Siraisi, Arts and Sciences at Padua: The "Studium" of Padua before 1350, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Studies and Texts, vol. 25 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1973), 63, states that Aegidius Romanus was "almost certainly" known in Padua. For Paduan writers' direct knowledge of Aristotle, see Hyde, 306, who notes that the Paduan poet Albertino Mussato (1261-1329) knew Aristotle's Poetics; on Mussato, see Siraisi, 45-49.

43. See Bellinati, "Iconografia, iconologia e iconica nell'arte nuova di Giotto alla Cappella Scrovegni dell'Arena di Padova," Padova e II Suo Territorio 4 (1989): 16-21; Basile, 19 n. 20. Altegrado was in the papal Curia from 1299-1301 and was elected bishop of Vicenza in 1304; he was in Padua from 1301 to 1304. For other suggestions as to the identity of Giotto's advisor, see Basile, 19 n. 20.

44. Noonan, 39. 45. Paolo Marangon, Alle origini dell'aristotelismo padovano (sec. XII-XIII)

(Padua: Antenore, 1977); Luciano Gargan, Lo studio teologico e la biblioteca domenicani a Padova nel tre e quattrocento (Padua: Antenore, 1971).

46. Giuseppe Abate et al., eds., Codici e manoscritti della Biblioteca antoniana, 2 vols. (Vicenza: N. Pozza, 1975).

47. Le Goff, 1990, chap. 2, esp. 23-26. 48. Jacobus de Voragine, vol. 2, 151: "When the priest saw him, he angrily

ordered him away and upbraided him for presuming to approach the altar of God, declaring that it was not proper for one who was subject to the Law's curse to offer sacrifice to the Lord of the Law, nor for a sterile man, who made no increase to the people of God, to stand among men who begot sons."

49. The conception is traditionally said to have taken place when Joachim and Anna kissed at the Golden Gate; on this point, seejacqueline Lafontaine- Dosogne, "The Cycle of the Life of the Virgin," in Studies in the Art of the Kariye Djami and Its Intellectual Background, vol. 4, The Kariye Djami, ed. Paul Underwood (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 173; Kathleen Ashley and Pamela Sheingorn, eds., Interpreting Cultural Symbols: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Society (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1990), 18.

50. The Index of Christian Art lists no examples of the Joachim and Anna story in earlier Italian fresco cycles. However, the Annunciation to Joachim is included among four scenes from the infancy of the Virgin, now badly damaged, in the apse of the Upper Church of S. Francesco, Assisi. The group also includes the Birth of the Virgin and the Marriage of the Virgin; the identity of the fourth scene (below the Annunciation to Joachim) remains in doubt; for these, see Alfred Nicholson, Cimabue: A Critical Study (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1932; repr., Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1972), figs. 15, 16. Fuller examples of the Joachim and Anna cycle occur occasionally after Giotto, as in the frescoes by Taddeo Gaddi in the Baroncelli Chapel, S. Croce, Florence; see Andrew Ladis, Taddeo Gaddi: Critical Reappraisal and Catalogue Raisonne (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 1982), 24-37. Several scenes from the story are found on one panel, a gabled altarpiece by a late duecento Pisan painter in Pisa, Museo Civico, illus. in Enzo Carli, Pittura medievale pisana (Milan: Aldo Martello, 1966), pls. 87, 91-94 (this panel will be discussed below). For the Marriage of the Virgin in early Italian art, see Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, "Zacharias; or the Ousting of the Father: The Rites of Marriage in Tuscany from Giotto to the Council of Trent," in Ritual, Religion, and the Sacred: Selections from the Annales, Economies, Societes, Civilisations, vol. 7, ed. Robert Forster and Orest Ranum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 24-56, esp. 41-47.

51. Jacobus de Voragine, "Mary... returned to her parents' home" (vol. 2, 153); but see Klapisch-Zuber (as in n. 50), 30, who notes that after the ceremony, the bride went to her husband's house, led by his friends; see also Ladis (as in n. 50), 31-33. Klapisch-Zuber, 44, refers to a "May branch" in representations of the Marriage of the Virgin by Giotto's followers; perhaps the bough here is intended to be such a branch. Cole (as in n. 10), 65, characterizes the branch as "surely an allusion to the Virgin's forthcoming pregnancy."


52. The Index of Christian Art lists no examples of this subject in earlier monumental Italian art. Laura Jacobus, acknowledging that the space was originally intended for a window, finally maintains that Giotto "painted a new image of God the Father" on the panel used to close it; Jacobus, "Giotto's Design of the Arena Chapel, Padua," Apollo 142 (Dec. 1995): 37-42, esp. 41.

53. The Church in Padua seems to have been particularly interested in the Annunciation. Records for the cathedral indicate that an elaborate drama of the Annunciation was regularly performed there on the feast. During Gabriel's message a dove was released, and the deacon playing Mary captured it in his cope-representing the moment of conception. See Karl Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), vol. 2, 248.

54. Michel Alpatoff, for instance, has argued that Giotto's choice in this juxtaposition was largely aesthetic: "The painter was interested not so much in the meaning as in the visual likeness of these two scenes, a likeness heightened by color"; Alpatoff, "The Parallelism of Giotto's Padua Frescoes," in Stubble- bine, 164. He continues by maintaining that Giotto has actually displaced the "natural narrative position" of the Pact ofJudas to an aesthetic end. See also Stubblebine, 85, who contrasts the meeting of the virtuous cousins with the "evil and clandestine encounter" opposite it; or Cole (as in n. 10), 68, who notes the opposition of the "serenity and harmony" of the Visitation and the "perfidiousness" of the Pact ofJudas.

55. Charles Baldwin refers to the "proof by contraries" employed in medieval homiletics; Baldwin, Medieval Rhetoric and Poetic to 1400 (New York: Macmillan, 1928), 237. Erich Auerbach's investigation into "figurae" has established the theological and literary dimensions of biblical interconnected- ness; Auerbach, "Figura," in Scenes from the Drama of European Literature, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York: Meridian, 1959), 11-76. Henry Maguire has more specifically demonstrated that antithetical visual juxtapositions form an important part of Byzantine church decoration; Art and Eloquence in Byzantium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), esp. chap. 3, "Antithesis." For the Renaissance, see David Summers, "Contrapposto: Style and Meaning in Renaissance Art," Art Bulletin 59, no. 3 (1977): 336-61; John P. Moffitt, "An Exemplary Humanist Hybrid: Vasari's 'Fraude' with Reference to Bronzino's 'Sphinx,' " Renaissance Quarterly 49, no. 2 (1996): 303-33.

56. Bonaventura, vol. 10, 597, quoted in Ragusa and Green (as in n. 2), 313. Quotations are taken from The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, ed. Herbert May and Bruce Metzger (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).

57. Even this subject is very rare in Italian art. Only three other examples from the duecento or early trecento are listed by the Index of Christian Art: a relief in the crypt of the cathedral of Modena from the early 13th century; a cope in the cathedral of Anagni, from the end of the 13th or the early 14th century; and Duccio's panel from the Maestd; for the last, see James Stubblebine, Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), vol. 2, pl. 102. In all three, the high priest hands coins toJudas.

58. Barasch (as in n. 9), 166-68. 59. See Schlegel, 186-87. 60. For Giotto's debt to the Baptistery mosaic, see Edward F. Rothschild and

Ernest H. Wilkins, "Hell in the Florentine Baptistery Mosaic and in Giotto's Paduan Fresco," Art Studies 6 (1928): 31-35.

61. "His spirit could not emerge from that mouth (which had kissed the Lord) "; Historia scholastica in evangelia, chap. 167, De suspendioJudae, in Pat. lat., vol. 198 (Paris: Migne, 1855), col. 1625.

62. The only Italian example listed in the Index of Christian Art is the one at Benevento, in southern Italy; the depiction is more common in France and Germany. See Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, vol. 2: The Passion of Christ (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1972), figs. 278 (Ben- evento), 280 (tympanum, Freiburg, 1290-1310); see also Schlegel, 187 n. 15. In Italy, in the early trecento, Judas's suicide appears as part of the Passion cycle by Pietro Lorenzetti in the transept of the Lower Church, S. Francesco, Assisi; see Chiara Frugoni, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti (Florence: Scala Books, 1988), 21, fig. 23. For the iconography of Judas's suicide, see also Anthony K. Cassell, "Pier della Vigna's Metamorphosis: Iconography and History," in Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio: Studies in the Italian Trecento in Honor of Charles S. Singleton, ed. Aldo Bernardo and Anthony L. Pellegrini (Binghamton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1983), 31-76, esp. 50-60. Janet Robson is now writing a doctoral dissertation at the Courtauld Institute of Art, under Joanna Cannon's supervision, on the suicide of Judas in late medieval Italy.

63. Pseudo-Bernard, Meditatio in passionem et resurrectionem Domini, chap. 7, "DeJudae peccato et desperatione," in Pat. lat., vol. 184 (Paris: Migne, 1879), col. 753. The text was formerly attributed to Saint Bernard.

64. See Lewis and Short, Oxford Latin Dictionary, 1st ed. (1879), s.v. "uter": (1) "a bag or bottle made of animal's hide"; (2) see "uterus." In a cognate tradition of biblical paraphrase in 13th-century England, descriptions of Judas's death speak of a ruptured womb. As with the Latin venter, the Middle English wombe may mean either "belly" or "uterus." The consistent use of the word across several manuscript traditions would seem to indicate that both

meanings are intended in wordplay. For example, we read the following in the Cotton manuscript of the Cursor Mundi (Early English Text Society, vol. 62, 11. 16505-12), normalized orthography, emphasis added: "He brest in tua his buels all, / ute at his wambe thai wrang, / the sari saul ute thar he sent, / wit in that sorful thrang. / Ute at his wambe the saul it brast, / at muth had it na wai, /

that he kist wit crist muth, / Als ar yee herd me sai." The repetition of a prepositional phrase beginning "out of" (italicized above), along with the two references to his "womb," suggests an intentional use of birth imagery. See also the Northern Passion manuscripts (Early English Text Society, vol. 20, 1. 861): "His wombe cleefe that was ful seke," "his wambe clefe in twa," "His wombe cleue sone," and "His wambe clef than even in twa."

65. Such gender reversal was not uncommon in medieval thought; see, for instance, Carolyn Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).

66. Sedulius, Opera omnia, ed.Johann Huemer, in Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesias- ticorum Latinorum, vol. 10 (Vienna: C. Geroldi, 1885), 11. 51-68. For the widespread influence of Sedulius, see Pierre de Labriolle, History and Literature of Christianity from Tertullian to Boethius, trans. Herbert Wilson (London: K. Paul, Trench, 1924), 447; Angelo Di Bernardino, Patrology (Augustinian Patristic Institute), vol. 4 (Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics, 1988), 321; and Carl P. E. Springer, The Gospel as Epic in Late Antiquity: The "Pachale Carmen" of Sedulius (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1988), esp. chap. 7.

67. "Viscera rupta cadunt, tenuesque elapsus in auras / Fugit ab orbe cinis. Non haec vacat ultio Iudae / Quae suprema negat vindictaque mercis iniquae / Sic placitura venit: Nam, cum modo rura parasset / Funeris ex pretio, cum nomine Sanguinis emptus / Cespes in externas componens busta favillas / De tumulis fecundet humum, caret impius agri / Fertilitate sui solusque exclu- ditur arvis / Quae monumenta ferunt"; Arator, De Actibus Apostolorum, ed. Arthur Patch McKinlay, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, vol. 72 (Vienna: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1951), trans. RichardJ. Schrader, Arator's On the Acts of the Apostles ("De Actibus Apostolorum") (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987). Paul-Augustin Deproost sees a clear connection between this "theme de la sterilite" and the utinam sterili damnatus uentre of Sedulius; Deproost, "La mort de Judas dans l'Historia apostolica d'Arator (I, 83-102)," Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes 35 (1989): 145. For the influence of Arator, comparable to that of Sedulius, see Richard J. Schrader, "Arator: A Reevaluation," Classical Folia 31, no. 1 (1977): 64-77. For the influence of Sedulius on Arator, see Neil Wright, "Arator's Use of Sedulius: A Re-examination," Eranos 97 (1989): 51-64; and Deproost, 135-50.

68.Jacobi a Voragine, Legenda Aurea: Vulgo historia lombardica dicta, ed. Th. Graesse (1890; repr. Osnabrfick: Otto Zeller, 1965), 186, quoted inJacobus de Voragine, vol. 1,169.

69. Bonaventura, vol. 14,285. On the womb of the Virgin in Italian painting, see also John F. Moffitt, "Domenico Veneziano's Saint Lucy Altarpiece: The Case for 'Uterine Perspective,' " Source 16, no. 4 (1997): 14-24.

70. "Quinto videamus, charissimi, quomodo fructus Mariae sit liberalium, contra avaritiam, et maxime illorum liberalium, qui pro hoc fructu renuntiant omnibus temporalibus, juxta illud Canticorum: Vir affert pro fructu ejus mille argenteos, 'relinquendo scilicet omnia,' dicit interlinearis. Et iterum Glossa dicit: 'Per mille perfectio, per argentum omne mundanum accipitur.' Qui ergo perfecte omne mundanum pro Christi relinquit, ipse quasi mille argenteos pro hoc fructu tradit. Sed ecce qui dare noluerit mille, omnia relinquendo, det saltem aliqua pro hoc fructu, pauperibus subveniendo, ut sit sicut oliva fructifera, fructum misericordiae ferendo.... Heu, quam longe ab isto fructu misericordium, et terrena non concupiscentium, sunt animae avarorum! ... Dicitur quoque in Ecclesiaste: Qui amat divitias, fructum non capiet ex eis. Sic ergo fructus iste benedictus liberalium et temporalia contemnentium est; et ideo Maria super omnes homines fuit hoc fructu dignissima, quia super omnes homines in contemptu temporalium fuit liberalissima, testante beato Ber- nardo, qui ait: 'Quidquid Maria honoris in populo, quidquid rerum terrena- rum de paterna domo habere potuisset, omnia arbitrata est quasi stercora, ut Christum lucrifaceret"; Bonaventura, vol. 14, 287.

71. The passage, from De peccato usure, chap. 13, reads, "Set contra quia multa invenieuntur contra naturam fieri que tamen in veritate sunt talis. Virgo enim Maria, manens virgo, contra naturam genuit filium lesum et produxit fructum, qui tamen in veritate fuit filius suus et benedictus fructus ventris sui"; Capitani (as in n. 11), 632.

72. On Giotto's depiction of Charity, see Pfieffenberger (as in n. 10), chap. 5, 51-54. She cites a number of earlier Italian instances of the personification; only occasionally does she hold an attribute suggesting fertility. For example, in the mosaic at S. Marco, Venice, Charity holds a cornucopia, but on the tympanum of the Baptistery at Parma she holds busts, and in the pulpit of the Pisa Duomo, she holds a torch (Pfieffenberger, chap. 5, 51). On Charity see also Katzenellenbogen (as in n. 12), 56, who mentions a loaf and vessel, or a strongbox, as common attributes of this virtue.

73. Noonan, 30, 45, 50. 74. Bellinati, "La Cappella degli Scrovegni," in Padova: Basiliche e chiese, ed.

Claudio Bellinati and Lionello Puppi (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1975), 247-76, 254. He mentions Saints Lucy, Mark, Ambrose, Elizabeth of Hungary, John, and Augustine.

75. See n. 49 above. 76. Jacobus de Voragine, vol. 2, 152. Neither does the Protevangelium of James

mention a kiss: it states only that Anna "threw her arms around his neck";J. K. Elliott, The Apocryphal Jesus: Legends of the Early Church (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1996), 35. 77. As Lafontaine-Dosogne (as in n. 49) notes, in Western versions of this

theme Anna andJoachim typically do not kiss; she finds the Arena "a notable exception" (173 n. 58). The kiss, however, does occur in Byzantine art. Duecento and trecento examples in which the pair embrace, but do not kiss,


include the version in a Pisan altarpiece of the late duecento (see Carli [as in n. 50], fig. 94) and the fresco by Taddeo Gaddi in the Baroncelli Chapel, S. Croce, Florence (John White, Art and Architecture in Italy, 1250-1400, 2d ed. [London: Penguin, 1987], fig. 250).

78. See Ruth Mellinkoff, Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern Medieval Art of the Late Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), vol. 1, 211-12, for the traditional association of the profile view with evil; for duecento and early trecento examples of the Betrayal of Christ, see Anne Derbes, Picturing the Passion in Late Medieval Italy: Narrative Painting, Franciscan Ideologies, and the Levant (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), chap. 2, "The Betrayal."

79. See, for instance, the pulpits by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano in Siena and Pistoia (the Pisa pulpit postdates the Arena Chapel), illus. in Enzo Carli, II pulpito di Siena (Bergamo: Agosto, 1943), pls. 84-92; and Gian Lorenzo Mellini, I1 pulpito di Giovanni Pisano a Pistoia (Milan: Electra, 1969), pls. 113-27. A similar image appears in the Last Judgment fresco at the Cam- posanto, Pisa, where Satan appears to be ingesting, then excreting sinners; see Millard Meiss's discussion in Brieger, Meiss, and Singleton (as in n. 15), vol. 1, 40, and fig. 18, for a detail of Satan. Taddeo di Bartolo's fresco Scenes of Hellin the Duomo of San Gimignano also depicts a defecating Satan; see Samuel Edgerton, Pictures and Punishment: Art and Criminal Prosecution during the Florentine Renaissance (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985), 66-68, fig. 17. Edgerton, (27), interprets Giotto's Satan as defecating as well. Jeffrey Ruda, however, describes the image as "spewing the damned from a mouth where his genitals should be" and interprets it as "a complex inversion of Christ's generative power and the promise of eternal life through Christian rebirth"; "Ultimate Perversions: Readings of Satan at the Arena Chapel and Elsewhere," College Art Association Abstracts 1994: Abstracts of the 82nd Annual Conference, New York, February 16-19, 1994 (New York: College Art Association, 1994), 20. He continues, "[Satan] is feminized but with a false vagina that merely regurgitates what he swallows"-an interpretation consistent with our reading of the image.

80. In many medieval Last Judgments, a few souls among the damned, presumably the lustful, are sexually tortured; images of Luxuria, for instance, typically depict her with serpents biting her genitals and breasts. But here, both the sheer quantity of these suffering souls and the grisly specificity of their torments are unusual. In the Baptistery mosaic, a lizard threatens to bite one of the damned between the legs (lower left), but this harassment pales next to the sadistic behavior of the demons in the Arena Last Judgment. For details of the mosaic, see Antony De Witt, I mosaici del Battistero di Firenze, vol. 3, Le storie del Giudizio Finale (Florence: Casa di Risparmio, 1954), pls. XXXIV- XLVIII, including the lizard, pl. XXXVIII. Nor do sexual torments appear in either the Siena or the Pistoia pulpits, cited in n. 79 above.

81. See Le Goff, 1979, 35; see also Andrew Cowell, "Feminine Semiotics and Masculine Desires: 'Courtois d'Arras' and the Proper Male Reader in the Middle Ages," Symposium 50 (Spring 1996): 16. In this medieval French drama, prostitutes are associated with both theft and usury.

82. Other damned souls suffer fates that are probably also especially apt punishments for their sins in life, and some of these, too, suggest perverse sexuality. For instance, next to the couple suspended by their genitals is a woman hanging by her luxuriant hair-possibly a reference to her luxuria, or lust; to the left of the four hanging figures is a woman being straddled by a black demon in a stance suggesting rape.

83. For the panel in Pisa, see Carli (as in n. 50), fig. 87; for details of the Joachim scenes, see ibid., figs. 91-94. The eight narratives in which Joachim appears are, from top left, Joachim Distributing Alms to the Poor, the Annunciation to Joachim, the Dream ofJoachim, the Meeting at the Golden Gate; from top right, the Expulsion of Joachim, the Sacrifice of Joachim, Joachim's Return. Only in the Dream of Joachim, fig. 93, is he shown reclining.

84. For the Legenda Aurea as the source for the cycle, see, for instance, Stubblebine, 75, 112-26. As Rough (as in n. 8) points out (29-30), the Sacrifice of Joachim is described in a second text, a version of the account by Pseudo-Matthew.

85. One earlier example of the Magdalene at the foot of the cross is a Crucifixion by a Sienese painter close to Guido da Siena in the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; see James Stubblebine, Guido da Siena (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), fig. 52. Her presence here is, however, exceptional at this date. Evelyn Sandberg-Vavala (La croce dipinta italiana e l'iconographia della passione [Verona: Multigrafica Editrice, 1929; repr., Rome: Multigrafica Editrice, 1980]) compiled extensive tables of the iconographic details of 130 examples of the Crucifixion in Italy from the 8th through the 13th centuries; she noted the Magdalene at Christ's feet only in the Sienese

panel and observed that the motif is rare in the duecento; 395 n. 3; for the tables, see 384-97.

86. See Amy Neff, "The Pain of Compassio: Mary's Labor at the Foot of the Cross," in this issue of Art Bulletin. She cites Anthony of Padua, "On the Soul's Suffering as It Gives Birth to Good Works," sec. 4 of "Sermon for the Third Sunday after Easter," in Anthony of Padua: Sermones for the Easter Cycle, ed. George Marcil (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1994), 157. We are grateful to Professor Neff for making a copy of her article available to us and for granting us permission to cite this sermon.

87. Tintori and Meiss (as in n. 9), 211. 88. Schlegel, 189-91; see also Borsook, 10. 89. Le Goff, 1990, 63-64, quotes Jacques de Vitry's description of usurers:

"This sort of plague upon mankind should not receive Christian burial, and usurers are worthy of no tomb other than the sort given to donkeys." Le Goff also cites an exemplum told by Stephen of Bourbon about a penitent usurer who "ordered that his cadaver be thrown into the midst of... snakes.... The snakes devoured his body and left nothing but whitened bones on the spot" (63).

90. Kohl, 45. The will opens with a lengthy discussion of Enrico's instruc- tions for his burial: he "elect[s] the entombment of [his] body at and in the church of Santa Maria di Carita dell'Arena of Padua." He goes on to specify that if he dies outside Padua he wants his body transported to the Arena Chapel, and if some "compelling cause or impediment" makes this impossible, his body is eventually to be transferred to the chapel for reburial "as soon as possible." He then discusses payment for these services, again at some length. Other factors probably contributed to Enrico's repeated assertions here. Perhaps most important was Enrico's protracted absence from Padua; he left for Venice in 1317, where he died in 1336. During his exile, his estate, including the Arena Chapel, fell into the hands of others. For the details of Enrico's exile, see Simon (as in n. 8), 24-26. Sharon Strocchia has suggested that Enrico may have attempted to "'claim' the space as his own via the presence of his body" (personal communication). We are grateful to Professor Strocchia for her kindness in clarifying these points. As she has pointed out (Death and Ritual in Renaissance Florence [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992], 94-95), in the 12th century burial "intra muros ecclesiae" was forbidden to the laity, but by 1300 this prohibition was widely ignored.

91. Hueck (as in n. 5), 282. An expansion of the presbytery in 1317-20 allowed space there for a larger tomb; see Hueck, 282-86. However, the statue of Enrico Scrovegni postdates the renovation of the presbytery; it is attributed to a Venetian sculptor, Andreolo de Sanctis, and dated 1328-36; Schlegel, 201). The final tomb monument was apparently not set up until 1360, by which time the Scrovegni family had returned to Padua and reclaimed the Arena Chapel. Enrico, who was buried in Venice, was reburied in Padua at this time, presumably by his son Ugolino; Enrico's widow and several other family members were buried there as well. For these events, see Simon (as in n. 8), 33-34. On the tomb monument, see Wolfgang Wolters, La scultura veneziana gotica 1300/1460 (Venice: Alfieri, 1976), 25-26, 161-62; Schlegel, 199-201; Volker Herzner, "Giottos Grabmal ffir Enrico Scrovegni," MiinchnerJahrbuch der bildenden Kunst (1982): 39-66. On funerary chapels in the trecento, see Diana Norman, "Those Who Pay, Those Who Pray, and Those Who Paint: Two Funerary Chapels," in Norman (as in n. 17), vol. 2, 169-94.

92. For the text of the papal bull, dated March 1, 1304, see Stubblebine, 105-6.

93. Ibid., 106-7. 94. For Scardeone, see n. 6 above. 95. See above for the significance of theJubilee Year to Enrico. 96. For the uses of the chapel, seeJacobus (as in n. 52), esp. 37-38. 97. Benjamin Kohl, personal communication. After Enrico's first wife died,

he married Giacopina d'Este, who bore two sons; she was named executor of his will. For a genealogical table of the Scrovegni family, see Kohl, 45.

98. Le Goff, 1990, 83-84. 99. See esp. Le Goff's final chapter, 1990, "The Heart Has Its Own Tears,"

85-93. 100. Shorr, 170-71. 101. The two have been identified as Catherine andJohn the Evangelist; see

Bellinati (as in n. 74), 247. If Bellinati is correct, the presence of Catherine andJohn again may suggest the importance of Enrico's family here; two of his daughters were named Caterina and Giovanna, and the two side altars are also named for these saints. For the names of Enrico's daughters, see Kohl, 45. Interestingly, a third daughter was named Cappellina, as was Enrico's mother. For another suggestion about the identity of the figures flanking the Virgin, see Shorr, 171-72.

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