Christ Entering Jerusalem (Giotto)

On the Sunday before his death, Christ rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and was hailed as a king, the crowd spreading cloaks and palm branches in his path - the event Christians keep as Palm Sunday (Matthew 21:1-11). Giotto sets the procession against a deep blue sky on a stage-like ledge, boys climbing the trees to break off branches, the apostles massed behind. This is one scene of the fresco cycle he painted around 1305 for the merchant Enrico Scrovegni in the Arena Chapel at Padua - the work that remade European painting in solid, weighty, human form.