Giotto’s Sky
The Fresco Paintings of the First Floor Salone of the Palazzo della Ragione, Padua, Italy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12901352 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Darrelyn Gunzburg (University of Bristol, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 407-433 |
| Publication date | 2014-03-13 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal for the Study of Religion Nature and Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1749-4907 • E-ISSN: 1749-4915 |
| Publisher | Equinox Publishing (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1558/jsrnc.v7i4.407 |
| OpenAlex | W2059659958 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
Giotto’s frescos in the Salone of the Palazzo della Ragione, Padua, were painted across three registers. The upper register contains celestial astronomical imagery that few scholars have been able fully to understand. Using two sections of this upper register as case studies, I reconstructed the skies over Padua in the medieval period using astronomical and astrological software, together with the knowledge of poetic astronomy and naked eye astronomy. This approach showed that, rather than being simple decorations, these images are instead reflective of the constellations that dictated the seasons and the cycle of the year as seen over Padua c. 1309. Furthermore, they reveal a night sky that was populated with a constellational iconography that, I argue, was part of an ensouled cosmology
Art · Art history · Astronomy · Constellation · Fresco · Iconography · Painting · Physics · Sky · Historical and Architectural Studies · Historical Astronomy and Related Studies · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,11 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2017 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |