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Giotto: The Scrovegni Chapel, Padua
This beautiful series lavishly illustrates the world's major fresco cycles from the early fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Each book also contains a comprehensive text, a biography of the artist, a bibliography, and a glossary.
118 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1993
About the author
Brock Cole
31 books30 followersBrock Cole was born a year before the Second World War in a small town in Michigan. Because of his father's work, his family moved frequently, but he never regarded these relocations as a hardship.
"I thought of myself as something of an explorer, even though my explorations never took me very far. I had a deep and intimate acquaintance with woodlots, creeks, lakes, back streets, and alleys all over the Midwest."
He attended Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and received a doctorate from the University of Minnesota. After teaching philosophy for several years at the University of Wisconsin, he began writing and illustrating books for children.
"I had always wanted to write, and I loved to draw. I had small children, who were a wonderful audience. Children's books seemed a perfect fit."
His first book, The King at the Door, was published in 1979. Among his other picture books are The Winter Wren, The Giant's Toe, and Alpha and the Dirty Baby.
He now lives in Buffalo, New York, where his wife, Susan, teaches at the State University of New York. His sons both live in Athens, Georgia. Joshua teaches French history at the University of Georgia, and Tobiah is a painter and works as a waiter. Joshua is married to Kate Tremel, a potter and a teacher, and they have a little boy named Lucas.
Brock Cole's acclaimed first novel, The Goats, was published in 1987. It is set in the Michigan countryside of his childhood and captures the story of two loners' struggle for self-identity and inner strength after being made the targets of a cruel prank. In a Horn Book Magazine editorial, Anita Silvey wrote: "The Goats reaffirms my belief that children's literature is alive and thriving." Betsy Hearne, editor of The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, lauded The Goats as "one of the most important books of the decade."
In Brock Cole's second novel, Celine, sixteen-year-old Celine, a budding artist, is living with her young stepmother, only six years older than Celine herself, while her father is teaching in Europe. Celine dreams of escaping this situation, but she becomes involved with caring for Jake, her seven-year-old neighbor, who is going through his parents' divorce.
Since he began his writing career, Brock Cole and his wife have traveled a good deal, living for one year in Washington and another in Germany, as well as spending frequent summers in Greece and Turkey.
"To be honest, I simply tag along after Susan. It's her research which takes us all over the place. I enjoy it immensely, though. There's something about sitting down to work at a rickety table in a strange city that clears the head. It's the best thing for a writer, or for this one, anyway."
"I thought of myself as something of an explorer, even though my explorations never took me very far. I had a deep and intimate acquaintance with woodlots, creeks, lakes, back streets, and alleys all over the Midwest."
He attended Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and received a doctorate from the University of Minnesota. After teaching philosophy for several years at the University of Wisconsin, he began writing and illustrating books for children.
"I had always wanted to write, and I loved to draw. I had small children, who were a wonderful audience. Children's books seemed a perfect fit."
His first book, The King at the Door, was published in 1979. Among his other picture books are The Winter Wren, The Giant's Toe, and Alpha and the Dirty Baby.
He now lives in Buffalo, New York, where his wife, Susan, teaches at the State University of New York. His sons both live in Athens, Georgia. Joshua teaches French history at the University of Georgia, and Tobiah is a painter and works as a waiter. Joshua is married to Kate Tremel, a potter and a teacher, and they have a little boy named Lucas.
Brock Cole's acclaimed first novel, The Goats, was published in 1987. It is set in the Michigan countryside of his childhood and captures the story of two loners' struggle for self-identity and inner strength after being made the targets of a cruel prank. In a Horn Book Magazine editorial, Anita Silvey wrote: "The Goats reaffirms my belief that children's literature is alive and thriving." Betsy Hearne, editor of The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, lauded The Goats as "one of the most important books of the decade."
In Brock Cole's second novel, Celine, sixteen-year-old Celine, a budding artist, is living with her young stepmother, only six years older than Celine herself, while her father is teaching in Europe. Celine dreams of escaping this situation, but she becomes involved with caring for Jake, her seven-year-old neighbor, who is going through his parents' divorce.
Since he began his writing career, Brock Cole and his wife have traveled a good deal, living for one year in Washington and another in Germany, as well as spending frequent summers in Greece and Turkey.
"To be honest, I simply tag along after Susan. It's her research which takes us all over the place. I enjoy it immensely, though. There's something about sitting down to work at a rickety table in a strange city that clears the head. It's the best thing for a writer, or for this one, anyway."
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
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September 29, 2023plate by plate guide to the frescoes of the Scrovegni Chapel, from the apocryphal Annunciation of Mary's birth to her parents Joachim and St. John, to Christ's life as narrated in the Gospels, to the culmination of the Last Judgement
September 2, 2018
Very well done and an essential read for anyone going to see the chapel.
December 16, 2022
wonderful and enlightening. i had an occasional reservation on cole's readings of the paintings.
March 12, 2012
I've got to go to Padua now to see these paintings and, when I do, I am taking this book with me. The Scrovegni Chapel, often called the Arena Chapel because it was built on the site of an ancient Roman amphitheater, features a fresco cycle by Giotto, arguably the greatest painter of the early Renaissance. Giotto was revolutionary because he painted human emotion - love, loss, longing, grief, rejection, compassion, betrayal, suffering, horror, hope, joy. And it's all here in these paintings, which tell, as a good fresco cycle should, a story. It's the story of salvation, and you need not be religious to be moved by it. Cole begins his book with a short history of fresco painting in the Renaissance, focusing on technique, and of the Scrovegni family who built the chapel and commissioned Giotto to decorate it. The remainder of the book is devoted to the paintings, both as a harmonious and luminous whole (considered to be Giotto's masterwork) and as individual works of art. There are color plates for each painting accompanied by short descriptions (luminous in their own right) by Cole. A beautiful book.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews