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
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.
About the speaker
Michael W. Cothren, Scheuer Family Professor of Humanities and Chair of the Department of Art, Swarthmore College
Michael W. Cothren is Scheuer Family Professor of Humanities and Chair of the Department of Art at Swarthmore College, where he has also served as Coordinator of Medieval Studies and Chair of the Humanities Division. Since arriving at Swarthmore in 1978, he has taught specialized courses on Medieval, Roman, and Islamic art and architecture, as well as seminars on visual narrative and on theory and method, but he particularly enjoys teaching the survey to Swarthmore beginners. His research and publications focus on French Gothic art and architecture, most recently in a book on the stained glass of Beauvais Cathedral entitled Picturing the Celestial City. Michael is a consultative curator at the Glencairn Museum in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania. He has served on the board of the International Center of Medieval Art and as President both of the American Committee of the International Corpus Vitrearum and of his local school board. When not teaching, writing or pursuing art historical research, you can find him hiking in the red rocks around Sedona, Arizona.