Lamentation (The Mourning of Christ)

Personal Reflection

Among the 38 panels in the Arena Chapel, this is one of my favorites. Giotto employed new approaches to religious art that was unheard of at the time. Figures are turned away from the viewer concealing their face, making the scene more believable and grounded in reality. There's more attention to spatial depth, mass, foreshortening, chiaroscuro and composition complexity (plus grisaille in the other panels). Lamentation has more emotional resonance than previous depictions of this event because characters are given individual emotions. Despite Giotto having painted in the Proto-renaissance, he started to lean toward naturalism and including symbolism in the background, though he wasn't one to add a lot in the background if it wasn't important. I've been considering the barren tree for weeks and haven't settled on one idea, but I believe it either represents the dead tree of knowledge of good and evil or symbolizes that Christ will rise again in 3 days. The cliff it stands on leads the viewers eye right down to Jesus and where all the emotional action is taking place. To the left of this panel is a small painting of Jonah getting eaten by a whale, further drawing the parallel to Jesus's resurrection. The skies are blue instead of the typical gold, showing that he cared more realism or flexing the Scrovegni's wealth because this ultramarine blue was very expensive back in the day.

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