Padua Baptistery

With the fall of the House of Da Carrara in 1405, Venetian soldiers demolished the grand burial monuments and covered the numerous emblems of Francesco il Vecchio with green paint.

[1] In the tholobate are scenes from the book of Genesis, while prophets and evangelists look down from the pendentives; and here a less Byzantine flair is demonstrated, presenting figures that have been inserted into life-like spaces illusionistically depicted.

The figures represented in the surrounding scenes, however, appear freer, for example in the Wedding Feast at Cana, where a group of servants moves naturally about the room in contrast to the static diners.

From the analysis of these stylistic choices it is clear that the use of rétro effects was for Giusto a precise component willingly chosen to bring about an expressive and symbolic end: he was perhaps the only 14th century painter with the presence of mind to make conscious selections among these different pictorial languages.

God the Father can interrupt the course of natural events to manifest His will to mankind: which occurred during the three hours of darkness that accompanied the agony and death of Jesus.