travelingidahogirl

Scrovegni Chapel

In Padova (or Padua, as we’d call it in the States, although I don’t know why—actually, I don’t understand why the English names of cities should be at all different than the Italian ones. Ok, we have our own word for strawberry, but why do we need to rename their cities?), a small 12^th century church exists as an excuse for one huge fresco. Actually, it has a whole series of the paintings, but the entirety of the inside is painted. The artist Giotto apparently spent 20 months working on it.

I guess it is called a chapel rather than a church because of its small size. Seeing it from the outside, you’d not think much of it, especially around here where every other church is very ornate. The Scrovegni is plain and simple (a little tall and skinny) from the outside. But once you get inside…WHAMO. It is basically one long room. The two long walls are basically divided into four rows. Starting on one side, the top row tells the story of Mary’s parents (Joachim & Anna—did I ever know that? I don’t think so). The top row of the other side has panels of Mary’s life. The two middle rows on each side tell of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. The bottom rows—well, let me come back to those. At the end of the room—the wall at the end, between the two long walls—is a huge painting of The Last Judgment. On the top and left hand side of the painting, we see heaven and people entering heaven. To be honest, I didn’t look too closely at that part (plus, it was the most damaged). Because the right hand bottom half of the wall was Hell, and Giotto does not paint a pretty picture of it. Demons are eating--and (yes, I swear it’s true) pooping sinners (who looked quite disturbingly like babies). Others are hanging by their hair or wrists. One dude looks like his crotch is being eaten by some sort of lizard-demon. And there were lots of long objects aimed at the buttocks region of many a sinner. The bottom row of each side had simple paintings of the virtues that led to heaven (one side) and the vices that led to hell (the other).

Because the frescoes are in such a delicate condition, only 25 people are allowed to see it at a time (BOOK AHEAD). On top of that, you first have to sit in a small glass room, attached to the side of the chapel and watch a 15-minute video. This is so the humidity levels can be established (not sure what that means…?) before you go into the actual chapel. And once you go in, you only have 15 minutes to soak it up. It’s kinda crazy, but I’m glad it is still around for me to enjoy. There are some places where the painting is damaged or worn, but many of the frescoes were still popping with the color.

Oh, yea, the entire ceiling is painted blue with yellow stars. Like I said—no wall space is unpainted.

T. has lately been concerned with “who is the bad guy?” questions. He doesn’t seem to care as much about the good guys. Even when he plays Spiderman now, he says he is the bad one. While we were in the chapel, I was trying to point out things (NOT hell—Hubby had him while I studied that spot). He wanted to know “Where are the bad guys?”

“Um, well…ok, see the guy in yellow, kissing Jesus? That’s Judas. He’s kinda bad.”

“And who else?”

“Uh, well, those guys being mean to Jesus? They’re being bad.”

“And who else?”

“Oh! Those guys up there—see, they’re trying to take the babies away from the mommies? They’re bad.” (Reminder: King Herod ordered all male children be killed, trying to take out the King of the Jews. See Massacre of the Innocents)

“Why are they taking the babies?!”

Ok, so maybe this wasn’t a good one to point out to him because it clearly got his attention and we had to keep coming back to it. I wasn’t thinking about monitoring the Bible stories, like we do with the TV stories, but, duh! I probably need to.

(Ok, I couldn't take pictures inside--good thing since I'd left my camera battery plugged into the charger at home--yes, I had a battery-less camera with me. So I'm hoping the links I'm trying to include in this post work right.)

posted by travelingidahogirl @ 10:03 PM