The Entry into Jerusalem
Artwork by Giotto • 1305
🖼️ Reproduce this artwork — 📗 Book on Giotto on Amazon
About this artwork - painting analysis
Around 1305, Giotto di Bondone painted Entry into Jerusalem, one of the most striking frescoes in the cycle dedicated to the life of Christ in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. This masterful representation of Palm Sunday captures the moment when Jesus, mounted on a donkey, enters the holy city acclaimed by the crowd. The Florentine painter orchestrates a scene of remarkable dramatic intensity, where the pyramidal composition converges toward the serene face of Christ, while the inhabitants spread their cloaks on the ground and children climb trees to cut branches. The ochre architecture of the fortified city rises to the right, creating a powerful contrast with the intense blue sky that bathes the entire scene.
The pictorial revolution brought about by Giotto bursts forth in this monumental fresco measuring 200 x 185 centimeters. Breaking with the rigid Byzantine tradition, the artist infuses his characters with palpable humanity, endowed with volumes sculpted by light and natural gestures. The thick drapery, in bold colors – pink, blue, violet, green – clings to the bodies with an unprecedented realism for the time. The spatial depth, suggested by the layering of figures and the intuitive perspective of the urban gate, foreshadows the achievements of the Renaissance. This innovative approach makes Giotto the precursor of Italian naturalism and the founder of modern painting according to Vasari.
Commissioned by the wealthy banker Enrico Scrovegni to expiate his family's sins of usury, the chapel houses one of the most coherent decorative ensembles of the Trecento. Entry into Jerusalem is part of a continuous visual narrative in which each Gospel episode dialogues with the others. This work bears witness to the genius of an artist who, by freeing painting from medieval codes, paved the way for the masters of the Renaissance and continues to embody a decisive turning point in the history of Western art.
If you appreciate "The Entry into Jerusalem" and other paintings by Giotto, we offer you 10% off the purchase of an art poster from our partner europosters with the promo code GRANDSPEINTRES10.
Image license: faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional public domain work of art.
