Triplex Periculum: The Moral Topography of Giotto's Hell in the Arena Chapel, Padua

Abstract

Giotto's depiction of hell in the Arena Chapel in Padua is carefully integrated into the system of the fresco program. This essay considers Giotto's arrangement of hell as a purposeful rendering of medieval triads related to the dangers of sin -including the well-known triad often referred to as the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. Like Dante's organisation, the arragement of the Arena Chapel hell seems to make distinctions among three types of sin. The tripartite division is most obvious in the top of the composition: as sinners plummet into hell, fiery rivers divide them into thirds. The rivers establish regions of hell that continue, consistently but less obviously, below, where sweeping arcs of kindred sinners cluster together. To the left are the avaricous; the region to the far right belongs to the lustful; located between the avaricious and the lustful are the proud, wrathful, or envious. We propose that the three regions relate to medieval understandings of the triadic perils that lead to sin, based on the first epistle of John (2.16), which admonishes Christians to avoid the 'concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life'. From the early Church Fathers to the age of Thomas Aquina, theologians and homilists used this text to explain the triadic threat that leads to sin. In the minds of many of these commentators, a triple resistance, sometimes embodied in the Virgin Mary, was suggested in the triad of chastity, poverty, and humility. We conclude with a speculative reading of the donation scene of the chapel's Last Judgement. There a heavenly triad (Mary, John the Evangelist and Catherine of Alexandria) receive a model of the chapel from the repentant Enrico Scrovegni.