The luminous frescoes depicting the life of Jesus and the Virgin Mary that Giotto painted in the Arena Chapel in Padua are among the greatest works in Italian art. This splendid volume, the fruit of an ongoing restoration project, reproduces all the frescoes in plates that convey their muted yet glorious colors, their commanding tension and sense of drama. Basile, who heads the Chapel's conservation efforts, explores how Giotto set up a complex system of cross-references: the seven Vices and seven Virtues correspond to each other across the nave in paired opposites, and the narrative sequence of the frescoes, completed by 1306, culminates in a powerful Last Judgment scene. He also investigates Giotto's eclectic sources, which include the Apocryphal Gospels and a popular 13th-century lives of the saints.
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