Giotto: The Arena Chapel Frescoes [Hardcover]

Giuseppe Basile (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1993

The Arena Chapel is a small plain brick building in Padua whose interior is entirely covered with frescoes by Giotto, painted shortly after 1300 and still miraculously intact. Thirty-six large panels tell the stories of Joachim and Anna (the Virgin's parents), the Virgin Mary, and the life of Jesus from birth to resurrection; and on the entrance wall opposite the altar is a Last Judgement. These frescoes have always been seen as the starting point of Renaissance art, and are among its most famous masterpieces. As part of a continuing conservation campaign, between 1988 and 1991 the frescoes were thoroughly examined and recorded in minute detail. The results of this recording are now made available for the first time in their entirety. All the panels are shown complete and in a series of details, many of them actual size, in which expressions and brush strokes speak out vividly across 700 years. The reproductions are printed in colour to the highest quality. Accompanying texts provide the art-historical background, explain the legends, and describe the frescoes' survival through the centuries. This book captures the artist's supreme achievement in all its epoch-making power - his magisterial representation of weight and volume, his genius for storytelling, his compassion and his irresistible sense of drama. This is the definitive record of one of Western art's founding treasures. Giuseppe Basile is superintendent of the restoration work at the Arena Chapel and the Basilica di San Francesco d'Assisi. He teaches theory and history of art restoration at the University of Rome.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The luminous frescoes depicting the life of Jesus and the Virgin Mary that Giotto painted in the Arena Chapel in Padua are among the greatest works in Italian art. This splendid volume, the fruit of an ongoing restoration project, reproduces all the frescoes in plates that convey their muted yet glorious colors, their commanding tension and sense of drama. Basile, who heads the Chapel's conservation efforts, explores how Giotto set up a complex system of cross-references: the seven Vices and seven Virtues correspond to each other across the nave in paired opposites, and the narrative sequence of the frescoes, completed by 1306, culminates in a powerful Last Judgment scene. He also investigates Giotto's eclectic sources, which include the Apocryphal Gospels and a popular 13th-century lives of the saints.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 388 pages
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson; 2nd edition (October 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0500236674
• ISBN-13: 978-0500236673
• Product Dimensions: 10.5 x 10.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,807,000 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most glorious book I own, April 1, 2001

By 

Chel Micheline "Chel Micheline" (Southwest Florida) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Giotto: The Arena Chapel Frescoes (Hardcover)

(This review is supposed to be for "Giotto : The Arena Chapel Frescoes" by Giuseppe Basile, not a book about the Vikings. I don't know why it got put under this book and not under the Giotto book- sorry!)

I'm so sad to see this book out of print, and feel so lucky to have a copy.

After majoring in Art History in college, I have a *lot* of "coffee table" art books. They are all beautiful- my favorites being the ones with more plates and less text because I knew after I read them I would be able to treasure them always. This book is my most glorious treasure for that period of my life- just gorgeous. It is comprised of almost completely all full page plates, with a very very small introduction.

The plates are all printed on very high quality, thick paper. Many fold out. The detail is amazing- you can see the texture of the paint in every print. The blues seem to come alive, and the gold in the plates literally sparkles.

I can't possibly do this book justice by my review. I am actually sitting here, trying to find ways to describe it and it's proving impossible.

I'm not a big fan of Italian art (post-impressionism is my thing), and was not required to purchase this book for school, but I found myself lusting after it. When I went to the now defunct Oxford Books in Atlanta, I used to run to the art section and sit for hours, just thumbing through it.

If you even have a small amount of respect for Giotto, you must purchase this book. The price is definitely steep, and I sort of struggled with the idea of paying for a non-necessary book for months before my family bought it for me as a surprise, but I can't tell you how very worth it this book is.