Pearson's Looking Through the Canvas with Michael Cothren on Giotto’s Kiss of Judas: a dynamic meditation on good and evil, packed with questions and unsolvable enigmas

View all tags

Join author and Professor Michael Cothren in our Looking Through the Canvas webisode series where he will discuss unique perspectives on Giotto's Kiss of Judas. The frescos wealthy banker Enrico Scrovegni commissioned from Tuscan painter Giotto di Bondone in the early years of the fourteenth century are among the most important works of the Western painting tradition. They appear in most introductory courses to demonstrate the movement toward the use of modeled, weighty figures to enact sacred narrative with a humanizing focus that moves this history of painting toward the Renaissance in Italy. For centuries after they were completed, artists journeyed to Padua to study and draw from these murals, which became an inspirational aspect of their training. During a semester in France studying studio-art, my own instructor sent me to Padua to study and draw. But instead of guiding me to the solution of problems in my own painting (her reasoning for sending me there), the days I spent in the Scrovegni chapel fueled within me a curiosity about the objectives and enigmas of visual narrative that converted me to a life in art history.

Michael W. Cothren, Scheuer Family Professor of Humanities and Chair of the Department of Art, Swarthmore College

Join author and Professor Michael Cothren in our Looking Through the Canvas webisode series where he will discuss unique perspectives on Giotto's Kiss of Judas. The frescos wealthy banker Enrico Scrovegni commissioned from Tuscan painter Giotto di Bondone in the early years of the fourteenth century are among the most important works of the Western painting tradition. They appear in most introductory courses to demonstrate the movement toward the use of modeled, weighty figures to enact sacred narrative with a humanizing focus that moves this history of painting toward the Renaissance in Italy. For centuries after they were completed, artists journeyed to Padua to study and draw from these murals, which became an inspirational aspect of their training. During a semester in France studying studio-art, my own instructor sent me to Padua to study and draw. But instead of guiding me to the solution of problems in my own painting (her reasoning for sending me there), the days I spent in the Scrovegni chapel fueled within me a curiosity about the objectives and enigmas of visual narrative that converted me to a life in art history.

Recorded:

Duration: