Description
Book SynopsisA discussion of the murals by Giotto in the Arena Chapel of Padua, Italy. The artist's work is considered in terms of its relationship to the structure of the poetry of Dante, biblical exegesis, geometry, and symmetry.
Trade Review“Andrew Ladis’s inspired and beautifully wrought meditation on Giotto’s Scrovegni Chapel frescoes, a distillation of over thirty years of study, is a book of rare literary distinction, critical acumen, and scholarly depth—a work that illuminates with stunning insight the spirituality, humanity, and artistic genius of one of the truly great artists in the Western tradition.”
—Paul Barolsky,University of Virginia
“A marvelous work, beautifully written, full of fresh observations about the Arena Chapel.”
— Anne Derbes,Hood College
“This splendid book represents a culmination of Ladis’s long study of late medieval Italian art, particularly the work of Giotto. Completed just before Ladis’s untimely death, it is a sustained analysis of the interrelated subjects, themes, and theological ideas manifested in the Arena Chapel frescoes. Above all, it represents a remarkable act of seeing, complementing Giotto’s own unique vision. This book, with its emphasis on the poetics of form, serves as the perfect complement to Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona’s equally superb The Usurer’s Heart (2008), which provides a more text-based analysis of the chapel, its donors, and its meaning. Both books will be considered crucial reading for years to come about one of the supreme works of European painting.”
—J. I. Miller Choice
“For a student who needs a good introduction to how the chapel really ‘works’ . . . this may be just the ticket.”
—John Osborne The Burlington Magazine
“For the reader of these extraordinarily perceptive essays, [Ladis’s] book is a prose poem in ekphrasis. Again and again, he inspires the reader to be a ‘thoughtful viewer-pilgrim’; we pilgrims are fortunate to have such a meticulous and sophisticated guide in Andrew Ladis.”
—Mark Sandona Renaissance Quarterly
Table of ContentsContents
List of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction: Giotto’s O
1. The Highest Thing
2. That Obscure Object of Desire
3. Phantom Presences
4. The Rhetoric of Wonder
5. Things and Time
Conclusion: Full Circle
Notes
Bibliography
Index
