c. 1304~13, 230*200cm
The Arena Chapel in Padua is decorated with Giotto's greatest surviving work, a cycle of frescoes painted about 1305~06 showing scenes from the life of the and from the Passion. The frescoes run all the way round the chapel. Giotto's Deposition of Christ, which is one of the frescoes on
the north wall of the Arena Chapel, is the end of the same
adventure we see starting in Duccio's Calling of the Apostles.
Giotto has called all his forces into play in this visualization
of one of the great episodes in the story of Christ. In contrast to the towering, remote heights of Duccio's and Cimabue's enthroned Madonnas, Giotto brings the action down to our human eye-level, creating a startling truthfulness, and
transforming the familiar event into a humanly real, intensely moving drama. The great square is vibrant with activity,
with saintly mourners, each clearly distinct and intent on a
specific action. His Mother, a woman of almost masculine
determination (Giotto always depicts her as tall and stately),
clasps the dead body to herself, controlled and tragic. Mary Magda-
lene humbly holds His feet, contemplating through her tears the marks of the nails. St John makes a wild gesture of despairing grief, flinging back his arms, offering his breast to the terrible reality. The older men, Nicodemu-
sand Joseph of Arimathea, stand to the side, reticent, mournful, while Mary's companions, who supported her at the
foot of the cross, wail and lament and shed the tears that she does not. Such a bloodstained earth is no place for the
angels, but they swoop and somersault with the roarings of
their sorrow. One lone and leafless tree on the arid hillside
behind hints at the horror of the death, yet the darkened b
lue of the sky has a secret luminosity. Giotto and his conte
mporaries knew, even if the wildly passionate angels do not,
that Christ would rise again. The strange self-possession of
the may spring from this prophetic inner certainty,
and it is a measure of Giotto's narrative conviction that we
should ponder these possibilities.
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