Patrick Bringley quit his busy event-planning job at The New Yorker magazine after his brother died of cancer. He needed some quiet time. He wanted to think about grief and moments of beauty and what it all means. So he went to work as a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, an inner journey that grew into his book All the Beauty in the World.
In my first weeks at the Met, the most memorable complaint I overheard came when I was patrolling the Late Gothic and Early Renaissance galleries —
“Goddammit, I’m in the Jesus pictures again!”
I sympathize with our unhappy customer. But although I’m not a Christian, I adore the Jesus pictures. They’re like paging through a family album of a grim but exceptionally intimate kind. There are the baby pictures, the moments of transition in a person’s life, and the unavoidable suffering.
Author Patrick Bringley, “All the Beauty in the World,” 2023
No one embodies Bringley’s perspective more beautifully than Giotto di Bondone, the 14th-century genius who stepped away from the rigid, stylized conventions of Byzantine art to pioneer a new way of painting.
What does it mean to be human?
Instead of painting flat figures on golden backgrounds, Giotto brought Bible stories to life with relatable people in natural settings. He was inspired by a growing interest in our shared humanity—a major cultural shift championed by writer Dante Alighieri, poet Francesco Petrarch, and other humanist thought leaders of the late 13th and 14th centuries.
Thus, sometime around 1305, he began his most revolutionary and influential work: the interior frescoes of the Arena (Scrovegni) Chapel in Padua, Italy. The chapel is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Giotto’s frescoes (paintings made on wet plaster) tell the story of Jesus, his parents, and even his grandparents in dozens of pictures that transform the walls into a super-sized family album. To follow the scenes, viewers start in the upper register and walk in a spiral progression.
The cycle begins with Jesus’s grandparents, Joachim and Anne, and their struggle with infertility. In Expulsion of Joachim from the Temple, a priest casts out Joachim because he is childless.
For centuries, scholars questioned that empty area on the far right of the composition. Ultimately, x-radiography proved that Giotto intentionally left the space bare, probably to foreshadow the dark psychological void Joachim was about to enter.
Joachim can’t bring himself to go home
Believing he has lost everything, Joachim leaves the village to wander aimlessly. In Joachim Among the Shepherds, he’s so consumed by despair that he fails to catch the “side eye” he’s getting from two young shepherds.
Meanwhile, back home, his wife prays for his safe return. True to Giotto’s style, The Annunciation to Saint Anne feels like a stage play. An angel pops through a window to tell Anne she will soon give birth to a baby girl. A maid eavesdrops at the front door.
But instead of returning home, Joachim falls asleep outside. In the fresco Joachim’s Dream, the entrance of the shed reflects his black mood.
In a beautiful bit of painting, an angel materializes to announce that Anne is pregnant. Yet, Joachim doubts this is a message from God. A luminous sadness pervades the entire scene—even the animals show an almost human sense of concern.
Giotto’s deep blue skies mark a radical shift in art history. Byzantine painters traditionally used shimmering gold leaf to tie their figures to the eternal light of heaven. By introducing a realistic sky, Giotto did something revolutionary: he brought sacred stories down to earth.
The happy reunion
After several stressful weeks, Joachim and Anne reunite in Meeting at the Golden Gate. The couple’s warm embrace forms a triangle that shields them from nosy neighbors.
Indeed, this fresco likely depicts the first intimate kiss in Western art. As Anne runs her fingers through Joachim’s hair, a dewy-eyed young woman stops and stares. Beside her, a second woman partially covers her face with a veil, perhaps believing it’s not polite to stare.
In Birth of the Virgin Mary, the long-awaited day is here at last. Anne’s cozy home is teeming with nursemaids. Fresh linens and other comforts are being exchanged across the threshold.
Anne sits up to receive Mary, who is bundled in swaddling clothes. The infant appears a second time in the foreground, where you’d be forgiven for thinking a nursemaid is playing “got your nose.”
The golden bachelor
When Mary turned fourteen, it was time to plan for her engagement and marriage. In Presentation of the Rods, a dozen suitors arrive at the temple, each carrying a bare branch. According to tradition, a dove will land on the branch that blooms, identifying the man who is purest of heart.
The priest appears skeptical about some of these characters.
In Watching of the Rods, everyone kneels down in prayerful suspense. The older bachelor on the far left—the man with the golden glow—is a local carpenter named Joseph of Nazareth. It is his branch, and only his, that will flower.
These three scenes illustrate an artistic trick called isocephaly. For example, in The Marriage of Mary and Joseph, Giotto positioned the heads of the bride, groom, and guests along a single horizontal axis. Before the Renaissance invention of linear perspective, this gave paintings a more natural, rhythmic flow.
“Wait, is that Halley’s Comet?”
The fresco Adoration of the Magi has captivated stargazers for centuries.
Giotto’s scene is famous because for the first time a comet is depicted over Jesus’s crib instead of the traditional star. The image can be traced to two comets that crossed the sky in 1301 and 1302. One of them is the famous Halley’s Comet.
Curious and alert to everyday reality, Giotto interpreted the words “we have seen his star rise” from the Bible in a completely new way.
Art historian Francesca Flores d’Arcais, “Giotto,” 1995
Every family album contains a black sheep
A precocious child, Jesus excelled in carpentry and oratory. He moved through life surrounded by a loyal circle of friends—or so he thought.
For a brief moment, I need to shift my focus from the art to the patron. Enrico Scrovegni commissioned these frescoes because he wanted to be forgiven for his family’s sins. Enrico’s father, Reginaldo, was a moneylender so reviled by the Church, he was denied a Catholic burial. Dante even condemned Reginaldo to the seventh circle of Hell in The Inferno.
The family’s history of greed mirrors the betrayal on the walls. In Giotto’s fresco The Pact of Judas, a black demonic figure guides Judas as he sells Jesus’s location for thirty pieces of silver.
Artists traditionally focus on the notorious kiss that identifies Jesus to the armed mob poised to arrest him. In The Arrest of Christ, Giotto shifts the focus to the moment the two former friends lock eyes. The result is a breathtakingly intense psychological moment.
The sadness of having you away from me
In Noli Me Tangere, the risen Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene for the last time. She reaches out, her entire body aching with unbearable yearning.
Turning to her, Jesus says, “Noli me tangere” (“Touch me not”). Giotto masterfully places him in contrapposto (counterpoise) to convey two emotions simultaneously: the love Jesus feels for Mary Magdalene and his urgent need to depart the earthly realm.
The scene conveys not only the transcendent nature of Jesus, but also the human tragedy of two people close enough to touch, yet separated by an immense metaphysical gulf.
100 years ahead of his time
The frescoes in the Arena (Scrovegni) Chapel pre-empt the humanistic and naturalistic impulses of the Italian Renaissance by more than a century. Long before Leonardo and Raphael, there was Giotto.
A master painter and a down-to-earth father of eight, Giotto recognized that Bible stories are far warmer and more relatable than most depictions in Byzantine art.
As art historian John Ruskin famously noted, “Giotto painted the Madonna and Saint Joseph and the Christ Child, yes, by all means. But essentially he painted Mamma, Papa, and Baby.”
Postscript: If you happen to be in Italy…
You can explore all 39 frescoes in the series at the Arena (Scrovegni) Chapel in Padua. Click here for details and tickets. Reservations are required.
Not in Padua? No problem. You can always take a virtual journey through the Arena Chapel.