Enrico Scrovegni was a Paduan money-lender who lived around the time of Giotto and Dante. He was the son of Reginaldo degli Scrovegni and Capellina Malacapelli, and was married twice, first to a member of the Carrara family, then to Jacopina (Giacomina) d'Este, daughter of Francesco d'Este, Marquis of Ferrara. He may have been a member of the Cavalieri Gaudenti.
Enrico is most famous as the patron of Giotto, commissioning the great painter to paint the famous Scrovegni Chapel, c.1303-5, which he also commissioned. There is a tradition that he hired Giotto to atone for the sin of usury, although there is debate about whether this idea has any foundation. Dante placed his father in the Seventh Circle of Hell for his notoriously ill-gotten gains, and Enrico himself was a moneylender on a grand scale. Against the idea that he founded the chapel as an act of atonement may be cited the fact that it was a very sumptuous commission for his own personal use, attached to the grand palace that he built for himself. In 1320 Enrico Scrovegni fled the wars and civil strife that plagued Padua at the time, and settled in Venice. He was formally banished from Padua in 1328, and died in Venice in 1336. [1] [2]
Padua is a city and comune (municipality) in Veneto, northern Italy, and the capital of the province of Padua. The city lies on the banks of the river Bacchiglione, 40 kilometres west of Venice and 29 km southeast of Vicenza, and has a population of 214,000. It is also the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area (PATREVE) which has a population of around 2,600,000.
Federico Zuccaro, also known as Federico Zuccari and Federigo Zucchero, was an Italian painter, draughtsman, architect and writer. He worked in various cities in Italy, as well as in other countries such as Spain, France, the Spanish Netherlands and England. He was an important representative of late Mannerism in Italian art.
Andrea Mantegna was an Italian Renaissance painter, a student of Roman archeology, and son-in-law of Jacopo Bellini.
Pietro Cavallini was an Italian painter and mosaic designer working during the late Middle Ages.
The Basilica di Santa Croce is a minor basilica and the principal Franciscan church of Florence, Italy. It is situated on the Piazza di Santa Croce, about 800 metres southeast of the Duomo, on what was once marshland beyond the city walls. Being the burial place of notable Italians, including those from the Italian Renaissance such as Michelangelo, Galileo, and Machiavelli, as well as the poet Foscolo, political philosopher Gentile and the composer Rossini, it is also known as the Temple of the Italian Glories.
Altichiero da Zevio, also called Aldighieri da Zevio, was an Italian painter much influenced by Giotto, certainly through knowledge of the frescoes in the Cappella degli Scrovegni in Padua and quite possibly through having been trained in Florence by one of Giotto's pupils. Altichiero worked in Verona and Padua. Works by him survive in the church of Sant'Anastasia in Verona and in the Cappella di S Felice in the basilica of Sant'Antonio and the Oratorio di San Giorgio in Padua. His stature was compromised for a long time through his supposed collaboration with a certain Jacopo Avanzo or Avanzi, but study of the documents and historiography demonstrated Atichiero's authorship of the frescoes in both the Santo and the Oratorio di San Giorgio. It has been argued that the hand of an assistant can be seen in some early scenes in the Santo – although it was certainly Altichiero who was paid to decorate the chapel, and he received 792 ducats in the summer of 1379.
The Scrovegni Chapel, also known as the Arena Chapel, is a small church, adjacent to the Augustinian monastery, the Monastero degli Eremitani in Padua, region of Veneto, Italy. The chapel and monastery are now part of the complex of the Musei Civici di Padova.
Niccolò III d'Este was Marquess of Ferrara from 1393 until his death. He was also a condottiero.
Reginaldo degli Scrovegni was a Paduan nobleman of the Guelph faction who lived in the 13th century just before the time of Giotto and Dante. He is best known for being cited as a usurer by Dante in the Divine Comedy, and to be the father of Enrico degli Scrovegni, who commissioned the famous Arena Chapel painted by Giotto.
Niccolò Semitecolo was a 14th-century Venetian painter painter of the early-Renaissance period, active mainly in Venice and Padua. His work demonstrates the influence of Giotto. He is first recorded in 1353.
Italian Renaissance painting is the painting of the period beginning in the late 13th century and flourishing from the early 15th to late 16th centuries, occurring in the Italian Peninsula, which was at that time divided into many political states, some independent but others controlled by external powers. The painters of Renaissance Italy, although often attached to particular courts and with loyalties to particular towns, nonetheless wandered the length and breadth of Italy, often occupying a diplomatic status and disseminating artistic and philosophical ideas.
Lamentation (The Mourning of Christ) is a fresco painted c.1305 by the Italian artist Giotto as part of his cycle of the Life of Christ on the interior walls of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy.
Giuliano Pisani is a writer, classical philologist, scholar of ancient Greek and Latin literature, and art historian who was born on April 13, 1950, in Verona, Italy. He graduated with a degree in ancient Greek history from Padua University with Professor Franco Sartori. He was a full professor of Greek and Latin literature at Liceo Tito Livio in Padua. Since 2011, he has been a member of the National Italian Committee of the Promoters of Classical Culture at MIUR. He was also the technical coordinator of the first Olympiad in Classical Languages and Civilizations, which was held in Venice.
Giotto di Bondone, known mononymously as Giotto, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence during the Late Middle Ages. He worked during the Gothic and Proto-Renaissance period. Giotto's contemporary, the banker and chronicler Giovanni Villani, wrote that Giotto was "the most sovereign master of painting in his time, who drew all his figures and their postures according to nature" and of his publicly recognized "talent and excellence". Giorgio Vasari described Giotto as making a decisive break from the prevalent Byzantine style and as initiating "the great art of painting as we know it today, introducing the technique of drawing accurately from life, which had been neglected for more than two hundred years".
Carlo Naya was an Italian photographer known for his pictures of Venice including its works of art and views of the city for a collaborative volume in 1866. He also documented the restoration of Giotto's frescoes at the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua.
Duecento or Dugento is the Italian word for the Italian culture of the 13th century - that is to say 1200 to 1299. During this period the first shoots of the Italian Renaissance appeared, in literature and art, to be developed in the following trecento period.
Guglielmo Botti was an Italian dresser and restorer.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Padua in the Veneto region of Italy.
The Padua Crucifix is a painting in tempera on poplar panel by Giotto of c. 1303–1305. Originally hanging in the centre of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, above the latticework of the iconostasis, it was probably contemporaneous with his frescoes in the same chapel. It now hangs in the Musei degli Eremitani in Padua.
The Strasbourg Crucifixion is a painting in tempera and gold on panel of c. 1315 attributed to Giotto, now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Strasbourg, France.