Art & Critique

Giotto, Virtues and Vices: Hope

I once had a hard time figuring out the meaning of the word “plasticity” when reading an essay about Donatello’s sculpture. I understood the encyclopedic meaning but couldn’t apply it purposefully to the image: it remained a sort of a mystery to me, and so has that entire crucial characteristic of the whole renaissance movement. But eventually Giotto kindly came to the rescue; just as some words light up with full meaning after you encounter them in a different book, I grasped “plasticity” when looking at Giotto’s virtues and vices painted on the walls of Capella degli Scrovegni, Padua. That they are essentially stone sculptures rendered in paint only emphasizes the link to Donatello’s plasticity, and ultimately my own understanding of the term. And it comes to full light in these minimalistic by artistic necessity figures — there is little movement, but all of it epitomizes early renaissance plasticity.

Hope Buy From Art.com

So what does the word mean? In a few words, clean, maximally economic movement(s) and an unmistakable presence ensuing from them — a stark break from the frozen medieval representations, towards livelier and corporeally conscious images. Giotto endowed his subjects not only with a heart, but with a whole set of human organs, the whole anatomical package. In a way, in this turning from tradition the artist can be described as a painterly iconoclast. Yet, he manages to keep in line with the form, as his virtues and vices are as symbolic as they can get, as each symbol is crowned with a telling title. But his icons begin to express feelings: a faint smile here, a smirk there; countenances evolve and consequently involve the viewers. The representation of Hope that we see above carries a spiritual sense, transpiring, nevertheless, from a poignantly humanly profile, a woman first, and a winged seraphic creature second.

Charity, circa 1305 Buy From Art.com

In fact, the wings may appear as a foreign body altogether and the image could be viewed as more sound without them. Simply a figure of a religiously inspired woman, albeit such an amputation would change the concept of the composition: she would appear falling rather than hovering, tending downwards instead of upwards — a complete, and hardly an acceptable turn. But that only accentuates the break and dismantling of medieval dogmatic spiritualism into several detachable ideas, which when reshuffled, can produce a completely different meaning. The physicality of Hope is striking considering the spiritual connotation, though there is a balance between them: the thighs and the legs are so clearly defined as to seem almost seductively naked, while the piously outstretched arms and the wings counter that display. I’ll discuss the edges and the corners (particularly the right upper one) as a separate notional space in future articles.

Read More Reviews:

• Edvard Munch: The Scream
• Jiddje Straatsma: Landscapes
• Heather Horton: Still Life
• Jeanne Illenye
• Stephen Magsig
• Frank Gardner: Town Scenes — a Human Ant Hill
• Michelangelo: The Sistine Chapel, Libyan Sibyl
• Nicolas Poussin: Gathering of Manna
• Tracy Helgeson: Dark Blue Barn
• Holly Lombardo: Landscapes with Trees

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

This entry was posted on Friday, November 9th, 2007 at 6:43 pm and is filed under Giotto, Religious, Renaissance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.