ABSTRACT
During his travels through Italy in 1638, perhaps on his way toward Venice, Milton was likely to have visited the famous Chapel of the Scrovegni in Padua where he would have been able to view Giotto’s important frescoes of the Allegories of the Virtues and Vices (c. 1305).1 Giotto’s monochrome paintings depict the seven allegorical fi gures of the Virtues on the right wall of the chapel: Wisdom, Fortitude, Temperance, Justice, Faith, Charity, and Hope. The Vices line the left wall: Foolishness, Inconstancy, Ire, Injustice, Idolatry, Envy, and Despair. The series of Vices culminates in Despair; the series of Virtues in Hope. All fi gures on each side of the nave lead, as if in procession, toward the altar over which Giotto portrays The Last Judgment. The panels illustrating the Vices clearly guide the viewer to the horrifi c scene of the damned in Hell at the Last Judgment, with its jumble of dismembered, disemboweled, tortured fi gures. The Virtues lead to the orderly, peaceful goldenhaloed community of the blessed within Heavenly Paradise.
