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The Usurer's Heart: Giotto, Enrico Scrovegni, and the Arena Chapel in Padua. By Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 2008. Pp. xxii, 237. $75.00. ISBN 978-0-271-03256-6.)
The title of this book comes from a miracle of St. Anthony of Padua where a moneylender's heart was posthumously found, not in his bodily chest, as it were, but in the chest that held his treasure. Later, Dante relegated Rinaldo Scrovegni, a Paduan, to the place in hell reserved for such usurers. It has long been supposed that his son, Enrico, founded a chapel in the old Roman arena in Padua and employed Giotto to produce paintings for it in expiation for this mortal sin by which his family was tainted. However, this view has been challenged in recent times. Here, Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona show fairly conclusively that the old orthodoxy is, more than likely, correct.
First, by considering some previously overlooked contemporary evidence that relates to father and son, they demonstrate that Enrico did decide to make financial recompense to his city and spiritual recompense to his Maker...