Visions of Hell: Through the Eyes of Giotto and Michelangelo

Here's a paper I wrote back in my art history days (2010). Hope it's enlightening. -Manda

Visions of Hell

Through the Eyes of Giotto and Michelangelo:

A Comparison of the depictions of Hell in Giotto’s Arena Chapel fresco

and Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel Fresco

By:

Amanda Walczesky

5/1/10

The visual representation of the Last Judgment is a tradition that dates back to as early as the sixth century. Calling on written sources as varied as classical works such as the Aeneid and the Odyssey, the New Testament and medieval accounts of visions of hell, artists amassed a set of motifs by which they depicted the condemning of souls to hell.¹ This collection of iconography survived for centuries and was well known to both Giotto and Michelangelo in their respective times. For this essay I intend to compare the portions of these artists’ frescoes that deal specifically with Hell using primarily the connections found in the works to the Italian poet Dante Alighieri’s allegory The Inferno and actual visual comparison of the two frescoes. I intend to show that both Giotto’s and Michelangelo’s differing relationships to Dante affected the meaning of their works and also that Michelangelo, working over two centuries after Giotto, was influenced by the former master in a way that adds a deeper meaning to his own work in the Sistine Chapel.

A brief background of the two works is needed in order to understand the significance of certain visual aspects of the frescoes according to the motifs found within the scenes. Giotto completed his series of frescoes in the Arena Chapel in Padua sometime during 1306.² Commissioned by the wealthy, yet not so well-liked, Enrico Scrovegni, Giotto created a cycle of frescoes dedicated to the theme of salvation and redemption upon the walls of the chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary. This theme would have been appropriate for one such as Enrico, as he was the son of the infamous usurer Reginaldo Scrovegni, whom Dante includes in The Inferno placing him next to two other men from wealthy Florentine families.³ Perhaps he felt the need to atone for his father’s sins and through the construction of a church, decorated with such imagery, he could achieve some redemption. If one identifies the central female figure as the Virgin Mary, then Giotto’s depiction of Enrico presenting the completed church to her indicates that Scrovegni intended for the entire chapel to be part of his, and his family’s, salvation. It should be noted that many scholars agree that Enrico Scrovegni was not the only patron responsible for the building and decorating of the Arena Chapel. A semi-religious military order called the Cavalieri Gaudenti of which Enrico himself was a member, seems to have had a significant hand in the construction of this chapel. According to Robert H. Rough in his article on the subject, “The ideals of the Cavalieri – the devotion to the Virgin and the suppression of usury – . . . are interrelated motifs that can be seen in the Arena Chapel’s paintings.”⁴ The overwhelming focus on this sin of usury, or the charging of interest on loans, seems to indicate the hand of both patrons and also accounts for the connection to Dante.

When Michelangelo was commissioned by Pope Paul III, to create a Last Judgment as the altarpiece for the Sistine Chapel and which was finished in 1541, it had been over two hundred years since Giotto had created his work in the Arena Chapel. There is no doubt that Michelangelo would have been familiar with the cycle of frescoes, as famous as Giotto was it was a certainty that Michelangelo would know the master’s work. However familiar Michelangelo may have been with Giotto, it is evident that he merely admired the master and by no means felt the need to copy his style or content, for the Sistine Chapel Last Judgment was a radical departure aesthetically from any previous image of its kind. Though visually different, much of the same traditional themes hold true, yet Michelangelo draws on some interesting sources for his conveyance of these themes, Dante being the source that I intend to discuss.

To begin a comparison of the visual differences between Giotto’s and Michelangelo’s Last Judgments, it is only fitting to start with the older work. Giotto’s Last Judgment contains a Hell that is much more traditional in appearance and construction than Michelangelo’s version. The viewer is presented with a plethora of demons, sinners, fire and torment, all of which are situated around the grotesque figure of Satan himself. Giotto uses his artistic license to elaborate on the various methods in which the demons inflict their tortures, often being quite creative. It was expected from artists, traditionally, to use their imaginations in this portion of a Last Judgment and though Giotto seems to be following prescribed descriptions of punishments for sins, his legendary wit is evident. However the hand of imagination is even more obvious in Michelangelo’s work if one considers nothing but the break from traditional representations of Hell.⁵

Michelangelo’s fresco is a departure from any of its predecessors, not only in what is depicted but how the scene is supposed to be interpreted by the viewer. It is obvious by first examination that only the entrance to Hell is depicted, this evidenced by the presence of Charon and Minos who are the ferryman and the gatekeeper of Hell, respectively. This may seem to prohibit any in-depth comparison between Giotto’s and Michelangelo’s works, however the relationship between Michelangelo’s depiction and Dante ties in well with the historical background of Giotto’s more traditional work. As Michelangelo incorporates pagan mythology into a sacred work of art, he demands from his audience knowledge of Dante, something which would most likely not have been lost on a sixteenth century viewer.⁶ So we have a blatant reference to the structure of Hell from a Dantean perspective however we are denied a view into Hell, only a bare glimmer of fires in the distance.

Because Michelangelo does not incorporate a traditional rendering of the torments of sinners, it is important to focus not on what he fails to give us, but what is actually shown. If Giotto’s work was intended as part of a series of frescoes filled with the theme of redemption, showing the punishments of sin would be appropriate. This would be a visual warning against what happens to you should you fail to find redemption and therefore it would become an incentive to repent and change, as Enrico Scrovegni probably felt he was doing when building the Arena Chapel and had it decorated with such a scene.

Michelangelo’s Last Judgment has been said to possess an overall theme of hope and victory through salvation.⁷ So with this theme in mind, Michelangelo’s rendering of merely the possibility of damnation keeps much of the despair and inevitability of eternal torment from the work as a whole. Charon leads the damned to be judged before Minos where they are then sent to the appropriate level of hell based upon their mortal sins. It is a psychologically charged scene that requires the viewer to draw upon this knowledge of Dante’s Hell, and with it Michelangelo begins a story that his audience would have known all too well, which was enough for the artist. He did not have to go overboard with literal depictions; the threat of torture was left to the imagination of the viewer.

Going back to Giotto, his traditional work is more in line with the redemptive theme found in the Scrovegni Chapel as previously mentioned. It is important to note that Giotto and Dante were at the very least acquaintances, as Dante writes of Giotto in his work the Purgatorio, and there is some scholarly evidence that they collaborated on the frescoes for the Arena Chapel.⁸ This collaboration seems plausible if not for the simple fact that Dante already had ties to the Scrovegni family even if it was not in the most amicable of ways. It does seem ironic that after consigning Enrico’s father to Hell among the usurers in Canto XVII of the Inferno, that Dante would then be involved in helping devise the frescoes for the chapel of a family for whom he apparently held in contempt.

This brings to light a main divide in the connection of Dante to Michelangelo and of Dante to Giotto. With Michelangelo there is only a literary and academic tie to Dante, as the artist incorporates key elements from the poet’s work into his fresco, therefore requiring his audience to understand the reference and make their own conclusions about damnation and salvation. With Giotto there is a tangible, historic tie to Dante, one that is more personal and political than theological or academic. It is also interesting to point out that there is little direct reference to any scenes in the Inferno found in Giotto’s work; the depictions of hell’s torments and inhabitants stemming more directly from a traditional iconographical canon.⁹ During the previous centuries, the punishment of sins was well documented in confession manuals, with extremely detailed descriptions of the hierarchy of sins and their appropriate punishments.¹⁰ It can be assumed that this categorizing of sin would have survived into Giotto’s time, and of course it would have been used as source for previous artists in their Last Judgments. So by drawing on tradition and using easily recognizable figures playing their roles perfectly, Giotto’s Last Judgment is easier to interpret when compared to Michelangelo’s fresco.

The last point I wish to make concerns any influence Michelangelo may have received from Giotto’s Last Judgment. It seems to me that, focusing strictly on their respective versions of hell, that Michelangelo perhaps used his own extensive knowledge of Dante’s work and combined it with an understanding that his audience would have been well-versed in this allegory. The fact that he purposefully avoids a direct representation of Hell, as tradition would have called for, indicates the very peculiar aspect of Michelangelo’s personality that made him so very different from his contemporaries. I do not believe that Michelangelo was directly influenced by Giotto’s work in the Arena Chapel, even allowing for any theory that suggests he was intimately familiar with the old master’s frescoes. The connections between the artists’ frescoes rests solely on their own individual relationships to Dante and it is this connection that creates the greatest differences in the two works.

Bibliography

Barnes, Bernadine. Michelangelo, Dante and “The Last Judgment”. The Art Bulletin, vol. 77, no.1. (Mar., 1995)

Battisti, Eugenio. Giotto: Biographical and Critical Study, trans. James Emmons. (Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1960).

Rough, Robert H.. Enrico Scrovegni, the Cavalieri Gaudentin, and the Arena Chapel in Padua. The Art Bulletin, vol. 62, No. 1 (Mar., 1980).

Morgan, Alison. Dante and the Medieval Other World. (Cambridge University Press, 1990).

Shrimplin, Valerie. Hell in Michelangelo’s ‘Last Judgment’. Artibus et Historiae. Vol. 15, No. 30. (1994)

1 Alison Morgan. Dante and the Medieval Other World. (Cambridge University Press, 1990). 199.

2 Eugenio Battisti. Giotto: Biographical and Critical Study, trans. James Emmons. (Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1960). 77.

3 Battisti, 78.

4 Robert H. Rough. Enrico Scrovegni, the Cavalieri Gaudentin, and the Arena Chapel in Padua. The Art Bulletin, vol. 62, No. 1 (Mar., 1980). 4.

5 Bernadine Barnes. Michelangelo, Dante and “The Last Judgment”. The Art Bulletin, vol. 77, no.1. (Mar., 1995) 69.

6 Barnes, 64.

7 Valerie Shrimplin. Hell in Michelangelo’s ‘Last Judgment’. Artibus et Historiae. Vol. 15, No. 30. (1994). 96.

8 Battisti, 21.

9 Battisti, 21.

10 Morgan, 131.