PASSION OF THE LORD

A long tradition, inaugurated by Dante in the Divine Comedy and then collected by Giorgio Vasari in his famous Lives, reiterated for centuries by art critics, saw first in Cimabue and then in Giotto the new beginning of Italian painting. But did modern painting start in Florence or in Rome? The first painter was Giotto, according to Vasari, or perhaps it was Pietro Cavallini? What is certain is that Vasari, by downgrading Cavallini to a “disciple” of Giotto, has established a paradoxical anachronism, as Vittorio Sgarbi noted, thus creating a historical prejudice that has lasted many centuries. However, the radical change in figurative culture concerns above all the passage from Byzantine influence to an art that interprets reality. In the frescoed walls or on the panels we can see real people, who have a social role and occupy a very precise and defined physical space. Among the painters who stand out in this new weltanschauung we find the two brothers Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Pietro (1280-1348), in a period extraordinarily rich in personalities and culture, is incontestably one of the greatest artists of the late 1200s and early 1300s: witness the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi. In the two basilicas (lower and upper) we find the masters of the Roman school (Filippo Rusuti), the Florentines (Cimabue and Giotto), the Sienese (Duccio, our two brothers Lorenzetti, with Simone Martini). Let us focus on the fresco by Pietro, Entry of Christ into Jerusalem, which is in the lower basilica. As is known, Pietro was influenced by Duccio (especially in the faces), but his stay in Florence brought him into contact with Giotto (hence his complex and ambitious architectural backgrounds). From Giotto, Pietro also inherited the taste for the story, which from myth becomes history, «sacred epic», as Argan observed. The fresco starts from a very traditional iconography, but then introduces some innovations. Let us think of the already mentioned perspective or the very accentuated spatial three-dimensionality. Palm Sunday and the Passion of the Lord, as we know, opens Holy Week by uniting the royal triumph of Christ and the announcement of the Passion. In the fresco, Christ is at the centre of the scene, followed by the apostles (we find Judas, without a halo). Jesus is the living image of the Father’s gift, who “is delivered into the hands of sinners” (Mk 14:41; cf. Mt 26:45) and who, in turn, “delivers himself” without reservations to the Father’s redemptive plan. We are inside an incredible and true love story, commensurate with the wisdom and imagination of an infinite God and who therefore exceeds the proportions of our miserable heart. Pietro Lorenzetti focuses our attention on the face of Jesus: a determined and decisive face (cf. Lk 9:51), a face that expresses the awareness of a destiny now imminent and that sees further than his acclaimers. Jesus has come to Jerusalem. His was an “ascent” first of all in the geographical sense but also interior since, as steps of this ascent, each of the Synoptics has given us three prophecies about the passion. The Messiah who is making his solemn entry into the city of David seems in open contradiction with these prophecies and appears completely different from human expectations, from the way in which the majority of the Jews had imagined this event. Instead of receiving dominion, Jesus is rejected by the official representatives and the Pharisees: their very position in front of the narrow gate of the city, represented as a magnificent castle, indicates that they do not enter and they want to prevent others and especially Jesus from entering. The evangelist Matthew explicitly states that at the entrance of Jesus “the whole city was gripped by commotion” (21,10). The verb eseisthē is used here, which expresses the upheaval caused by an earthquake, as it will be at the death of Jesus (cf. 27:51). And where do we stand? Let us make our own the exhortation of the Letter to the Hebrews: «Let us go out to him outside the camp, bearing his disgrace; for here we have no lasting city, but we seek the one to come» (13:13-14).

Commentary by b. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Praglia (Italy)

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves,
Prinknash Abbey