Hooked thumbs, pressing elbows, open mouths—these details lend intimacy and reality to an otherwise formal scene.
Giotto, The Entombment of Mary, 1310, tempera on poplar, 75 x 179 cm (Gemäldegalerie, Kaiser Friedrich Museumsverein, Berlin)
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Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:09] We’re in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, looking at a really spectacular panel painting by Giotto. This is “The Entombment of Mary,” and it shows the Virgin Mary tenderly being lowered into her tomb, but it also simultaneously shows her spirit rendered as an infant being cradled by Christ in heaven.
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:24] It was made for the church of the Ognissanti, or All Saints Church, in Florence. It’s certainly one the jewels of their collection.
Dr. Zucker: [0:00] It is a wonderful representation of the qualities that made Giotto such an important artist in the early 14th century.
Dr. Harris: [0:39] In the late 1200s, the tradition that Giotto was coming out of is the Byzantine tradition, where the figures are elongated, where there’s an emphasis on gold and patterning, where the figures seem really distant from us. There’s no real interest in their bodies as existing three-dimensionally in space, but that’s exactly what Giotto gives us.
Dr. Zucker: [1:00] Figures that have a sense of volume, of mass, of solidity, of gravity. But more than that, you’ve got a psychological intensity and interaction that makes these figures seem as if they are autonomous in the world.
Dr. Harris: [1:20] Let’s take, for example, Saint Peter, who’s engrossed in reading. If we look at the robe that he wears, we can see that Giotto has moved from light to dark to indicate the folds of the drapery and a sense of the figure being round and three-dimensional.
Dr. Zucker: [1:29] You can see the way in which the figure’s elbow is pressing into his waist, gathering that cloth, creating those folds. There’s really a sense, then, of the reality of that moment, something that we recognize as our own elbows have pressed into our sides.
Dr. Harris: [1:43] Look at how gently she’s being lowered into the tomb, and the look on the face of the apostle who lowers her body, looking into her eyes so lovingly.
Dr. Zucker: [1:54] The intimacy between them can be seen again between the spirit of Mary in the body of the child and Christ. Their faces are close. They look at each other.
Dr. Harris: [0:00] It’s also a kind of inversion of the image of Mary and Christ that we usually see, where Mary is shown holding Christ as a child.
Dr. Zucker: [2:21] Look at the way that the representation of Mary’s soul, the infant, has its light drapery swirl around it. It’s just a beautiful, tender rendering by the artist. Just to the right of Christ, you see a figure bending over slightly. That’s Saint Andrew, who’s sprinkling holy water on the dead body of Christ’s mother.
[2:37] Perhaps my favorite figure is just to the right of that. You can see, in back of the angels who are holding tall candles, there’s a figure in yellow-white gold. His cheeks are puffed out. If you look closely, in his right hand, he’s holding high a censer, that is, he’s distributing incense. It seems as if he’s trying to blow it towards Mary.
Dr. Harris: [2:54] Just to the right, another angel has its mouth open as though she’s speaking. Two angels just to the right of that seem to be engaged in conversation. While this image is very formal and hierarchical, with Christ in the center larger than all the figures, it’s at the same time informal and natural.
Dr. Zucker: [3:14] That sense of the natural comes across so well in the conversation between those angels. The angel who stands in front, look at the way in which the thumbs of that angel are hooked into its belt, into its pockets. There is this wonderful sense of total informality there.
Dr. Harris: [3:29] In fact, that angel also looks like she’s about to speak.
Dr. Zucker: [3:32] This is a painting about Mary leaving the physical realm and becoming spiritual. But it’s this kind of intimacy, this kind of detail of individual actions, through which Giotto creates this fabulous sense of reality.
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