Giotto Di Bondone, Ascension,1304－06

Giotto's painting, Ascension, portrays the scene in the New Testament where Jesus, literally, ascends into the skies. (Mark 16:19-20, Luke 24:36-53, Acts 1:6-12, and Timothy 3:16 portray this event.) Forty days after Jesus suddenly wakes up from the dead, God plans for him to leave again, this time painlessly and in a much more extravagant fashion.

According to the Bible, Jesus brings his eleven apostles to Mount Olive, slightly outside of the city of of Jerusalem. There, he gives his farewell and leaves for heaven on a white cloud. His apostles are rather baffled, for they thought he was resurrected to save them from tyranny. Jesus tells them that wasn't the case, and they need to deal with it themselves, as he was only alive to serve the purpose of making a religious dent to the world. And with that note, he is whisked away on a fabulous white cloud.

Probably not pleased with this piece of news, his eleven disciples continue to stare at the sky in which Jesus disappeared to, as if he would come back down. Two angels appear in his place and ask why the eleven are still staring at the sky. The angels then tell them to do what Jesus instructed for one day, Jesus will rise again in the same manner that left. Until then, they should all fulfill their tasks.

Giotto's Ascension has one inconsistency with the bible. Here, the Virgin Mary (the lady in the blue) also kneels and looks upwards at Jesus. The bible does not include Mary as a presence on Mount Olive.

Like a majority of Giotto's paintings, the painting shows the evident blue sky- a classic mark of Giotto. There's also the rock at the bottom center of the painting, another revealing mark of Giotto. The movement of the fresco is angled upwards, as Jesus shoots towards heaven in a superman pose, while the Virgin Mary and the eleven apostles look upward. Even the footless angels that surround Jesus are slanted so that all of them are facing up toward the unseen heaven. To emphasize even more the upward rise of the painting perspective, the two angels on Earth point up as well. Jesus seems to be the foreground of the painting in that he seems to stand out more. The white cloud in which he uses to travel to heaven slightly blocks the halo of the angel on Earth.