Scrovegni Chapel
Cappella degli Scrovegni
Interesting facts
- Giotto, then in his mid-thirties, worked with about forty assistants, and the frescoes took an estimated 625 days of painting on fresh plaster.
- In the Last Judgement, Enrico Scrovegni offers a model of the chapel that shows a large apse and transept the building no longer has.
- In January 1305 the friars of the nearby Eremitani church complained that the chapel was growing into a rival church with a bell tower.
- Pope Benedict XI granted an indulgence to visitors of the chapel on 1 March 1304, while the frescoes were still under way.
- A motet by the composer Marchetto da Padova seems to have been written for the chapel's dedication on 25 March 1305.
- Before the chapel existed, the site of the Roman arena had for a generation hosted an open-air pageant of the Annunciation.
- Giotto's vices are unusual: Avarice is missing, replaced by Folly, Inconstancy, Wrath, Injustice, Infidelity, Envy and Despair.
- Enrico Scrovegni's tomb in the chapel carries a marble effigy of him attributed to the sculptor Giovanni Pisano.
- Marcel Proust repeatedly refers to Giotto's figure of Charity from this chapel in In Search of Lost Time.
- The English painter Stanley Spencer modelled the scale and narrative sequence of his Sandham Memorial Chapel on Giotto's cycle here.
Why it is worth it
Behind a plain brick exterior in Padua lies one of the turning points of European painting. Every wall of the Scrovegni Chapel is covered by Giotto's frescoes, completed around 1305, and under a barrel vault painted deep blue and scattered with stars the whole space reads as a single, continuous story. The figures have weight, the faces show grief and tenderness, and the scenes are set in real space - a break with the flat, formal conventions of the time that later painters would build on.
The chapel was commissioned by Enrico Scrovegni, a wealthy Paduan, on land he bought in February 1300 beside the remains of the city's Roman arena, where his family palace also stood; the palace was pulled down in 1827. Enrico's father Reginaldo, a moneylender, is placed by Dante among the usurers in the Inferno, and historians still debate whether the chapel was meant in part as atonement. Dedicated to Santa Maria della Carità, the chapel was first consecrated on the feast of the Annunciation, 25 March 1303, and again on the same feast in 1305. The building itself is a single small nave about 21 metres long, 8.4 metres wide and 12.7 metres high.
Giotto and a large workshop arranged the frescoes in tiers: the lives of Joachim and Anne, then the life of the Virgin, then the life, Passion and Resurrection of Christ. The entrance wall holds a vast Last Judgement, and along the lowest band fourteen grey monochrome figures personify the virtues and vices. On the vault, roundels with prophets and with Christ and the Virgin stand out against the starry blue. Since 2021 the chapel has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Padua's 14th-century fresco cycles, and it belongs today to the city's civic museums together with the neighbouring former Augustinian monastery of the Eremitani.
Getting there
The chapel is in central Padua, about 0.7 km from the city centre, in the gardens of the old Roman arena. The nearest airport is Treviso Airport (TSF), about 36 km away. Padua's main railway station is within walking distance.
Plan your visit
We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.
Nearby places
- Basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua 1.2 km · pilgrimage-site
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Scrovegni Chapel, also known as the Arena Chapel, is a small church, adjacent to the Augustinian monastery, the Monastero degli Eremitani in Padua, region of Veneto, Italy. The chapel and monastery are now part of the complex of the Musei Civici di Padova.
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
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