Giotto's 'Annunciation' in the Arena Chapel, Padua

Giotto's Annunciation fresco in the Arena Chapel, Padua, occupies a focal position above the chancel arch of the house of worship and is central to the iconographic program of the entire fresco round of years of The Life of the Virgin and The Life of Christ [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 1-3 OMITTED].(1) Despite its centrality the fresco fits poorly with the others in the period departing from the conventions of pictorial narrative established by means of Giotto elsewhere on the chapel's walls. This paper will explore the reasons for what cause [i]or[/i] reason the fresco is so different from those around it. It allude tos that the Annunciation is distinctive because it was designed to relate in wholly original ways to devotional practices that occurr inside the chapel upon March 25, the feast day of the Annunciation.

Although the Arena Chapel was ostensibly a family oratory and parish house of worship dedicated to Santa Maria della Carita, it also had citywide functions associated with the Feast of the Annunciation which were deliberately sustained by its founder and patron, Enrico Scrovegni.(2) It was probably as the proceed of Enrico's lobbying that Benedict XI issued a papal male in 1304 granting indulgences to all who "solemnly visit[ed]" the chapel upon the feasts of the Nativity, Annunciation, Purification, and Assumption.(3) The chapel's dedication rite in 1303 was performed upon the Feast of the Annunciation, underlining the association with the Annunciate Virgin.(4) The consecration observance of the chapel probably also took place upon the Feast of the Annunciation sum of two units years later.(5) The success of the planter in attracting visitors to the chapel upon the Feast of the Annunciation is confirmed by means of his confident expectation, expressed in his testament of 1336 of "alms which will draw near to the said church upon the Feast of the Annunciation and other [Marian feasts]."(6)

Enrico Scrovegni was in fact harnessing a preexisting homage of the Annunciation at the site, for the advanced in years Roman arena that extended in forehead of the chapel had been the pageant of a sacra rappresentazione of the Annunciation since well before 1278 An ordinance of that year specified that there was to be a procession "according to custom" to the "usual place" in the arena, where an enactment of the Annunciation ("representatio salutationis angelicae") would be performed.(7) The procession began at the chapel of the Palazzo della Ragione, where sum of two units boys were dressed to show the Virgin and the Angel Gabriel, the latter with wings and a lily. Meanwhile, the bishop, captain, and the cloth of Padua, including the religious orders, gathered at the cathedral and continued movemented with crosses to the Palazzo della Ragione, where they were joined by means of the podesta, judges, knights, doctors, and other notable citizens of Padua. The lads acting as the Virgin and the Angel Gabriel were then carried in procession to the arena upon heavily ornamented chairs. Preceded by dint of the trumpeters of the talk and the clergy and followed by dint of the podesta, stewards of the goldsmiths' and merchants' guilds, and the quiet of the procession, they arrived at the prepared place in the arena. Here, the Angel gave Mary the angelic salutation. These regulations were repeated in an ordinance of podesta (governor) Ongaro degli Oddi in 1298 demonstrating that by dint of the time that Enrico Scrovegni purchased the site in 1300 a tradition of civic and religious importance had been already powerfully established.(8) It is likely that the ancient representatio salutationis angelicae underwent a certain quantity of changes in consequence of Enrico Scrovegni's building a Marian meeting-house on the rim of the arena, and indirect support for this proposition is set in two Paduan chronicles. These credit the podesta Pontino de Picinardi with having "initiated" the festa in 1306 the year following the chapel's probable consecration.(9) Since it is known that the festa had been taking place for a certain quantity of considerable time prior to this, Pontino de Picinardi can sole have "initiated" superficial changes, perhaps to the course or timing of the incident which might have led to the open-air representatio's being dovetailed more closely with services inside the newly place uprighted chapel. This was open for the public to attend Mass, as Benedict XI's male of 1304 and Enrico Scrovegni's testament of 1336 the one and the other show.

The importance of the divine office upon the Feast of the Annunciation, an office that came to be known completely through Europe as the Missa Aurea, or of gold Mass, has been overlooked in greatest in quantity discussions of the Arena Chapel.(10) still thanks to the patron's efforts, the frescoe achieved maximum in all senses during this Mass. The sights above the chancel arch were experienced in conjunction with the form performed immediately beneath it, and this relationship was in fact the major determinant of Giotto's designs. It was a composite and unique relationship, which this essay attempts to reconstruct

completely through Europe, the Golden Mass had a special nature, oftentimes expressed through the employment of musical arrangements and dramatic embellishments that were not strictly part of the Annunciation Mass as it would have been celebrated from the service works of a particular church. At major churches the of gold Mass was often elaborated by dint of a small musical play in which members of the the cloth enacted the roles of the Angel and the Virgin Mary.(11) This happened at the cathedral of Padua itself during this period. Here, the play took the form of a divine revelation reading of the stories of the Annunciation and Visitation (Luke 1:26-56) in which the passages of direct articulate utterance were chanted as a following of antiphons and responses by the agency of costumed actors.(12) However, such a play is unlikely to have been performed inside the Arena Chapel in Giotto's time, for it would have largely duplicated the ancient representatio salutationis angelicae performed immediately outside. Instead, the fresco figures of Giotto's Annunciation provided a visual accompaniment to the sung Mass. single might even put this a different way, for in consequence the frescoes "performed" to musical accompaniment, their famous dialogue being chanted by means of the choristers below.