Giotto's Arena Chapel and the Triumph of Humility

This book on Giotto’s Arena Chapel in Padua – the Cappella degli Scrovegni, circa 1300–1307 – takes its cues not so much from the familiar aspects of a celebrated and intensely studied monument as from its inbuilt surprises. Some of these are visual puzzles; some depend on mostly forgotten circumstances of the chapel’s creation and reception; still others challenge academic boundaries and conventional assumptions about its place in the history of Western art. These lines of inquiry, taken sequentially and together, enable a decoding – and, I shall argue, a recoding – of the structure, visual appeal, and significance of the chapel. As an investigation of the different zones and historical styles represented in the chapel, this book constitutes an exercise in escaping from the quicksand of history that so quickly swallows important local and temporal context for art and architecture.