Giotto and the Art of Heaven--Skeel
Like nearly everyone who loves Italian Renaissance art, I’ve often wondered why hell seems so much more interesting than heaven in the Last Judgment paintings. My own answer has usually been that, because we are sinful, we understand sin and its consequences far better than we do virtue. As a result, sin and punishment spur our imagination (we all have a bit of Dante in us), while heaven often looks more like a celestial game of ring-around-the-rosy (as in Fra Angelico’s lovely depiction at the San Marco monastery in Florence) than the true transformation the creation is groaning toward.
But after encountering Giotto’s Stefaneschi Polyptych in the Vatican Picture Gallery several days ago, I don’t expect to ask the question much any more. I now think it’s possible to show what heaven will look like, at least in a small way, and that Giotto, the thirteenth century Italian artist who transformed Western art, did it.