If you can, the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua is one of those places you should definitely make time to visit. It was painted in fresco by the great Italian artist Giotto in the early 1300s. Matisse visited it in 1906 and the memory stayed with him all his life. The chapel itself was commissioned by Enrico Scrovegni to abut his family palace (no longer standing), possibly as a means of assuaging his guilt for accumulating great wealth as a money lender. Allied bombs destroyed the church next door in an air raid in 1944. Giotto’s frescoes escaped by a matter of a couple of hundred metres.
The episode shown here is the Adoration of the Magi. The eldest of three kings kneels in front of Christ, having taken off his crown. True kingship, in other words, must be expressed in service. Immediately below this scene, and not by accident, Giotto painted Christ washing the disciples’ feet, another unexpected reversal of regal power.
Above the beautifully constructed, foreshortened wooden canopy Giotto has included the star, but unusually it has a tail. Scholars propose this is Halley’s Comet because Giotto had seen the comet himself in 1301. I saw it from a garden in southern England in 1986. I only discovered this week that the European Space Agency sent a satellite up to photograph it that year. The satellite was named Giotto. Halley’s comet returns every 76 years or so, so most of us get one chance to see it; it’s due next in 2061 which may be a bit late for me. Even so, this miraculous cycle suggests we are all connected, encircled and enfolded with light.
