The Scrovegni Chapel enshrines one of the most precious masterpieces of fourteenth-century Italian and European painting, and it is considered the most complete cycle of frescoes made by the great Tuscan master, Giotto, in his maturity. With this work, Giotto starts a new era in the history of painting, by presenting more natural and realistic human figures, and for this reason he was also defined the first modern painter. The Chapel rises among the remains of the old arena of Padua, and in the 14th century it was bought by the Scrovegni, a rich family of bankers and usurers from Padua, who in the year 1300 built their palace there. Between 1303 and 1305 AD, the Chapel dedicated to the Virgin of the Announciation was built, by Enrico Scrovegni to intercede for the soul of his father Reginaldo, placed by Dante (Divine Comedy) in Hell because he was a usurer. They entrusted to Giotto the task of representing a series of stories drawn from the Old and New Testament which climaxed with the death and resurrection of the Son of God and in the Doomsday, with the aim of soliciting those who entered the Chapel to reflect on His sacrifice for the deliverance of humanity.
Giotto's Adoration of the Magi includes a fascinating depiction of Haley's Comet: the scene in the second register on the right depicts the comet as the beacon which guided the Three Kings towards the manger in Bethlehem, as a ball of fire with a long tail. This depiction substitutes the stereotypical medieval style of the pointed star, in the naturalistic language that characterises the entire Scrovegni paintings cycle. Giotto could have had vivid memories of the comet, visible to him during the passage of September-October, 1301. The 1986 mission of the European Space Agency was actually titled in his honour: the spacecraft passed 596 kilometres from the comet, capturing photographs of its nucleus, a dark peanut-shaped body composed of inter-stellar dust and ice, with seven jets releasing three tons of material per second. The comet nucleus continues on its path, little changed, in our 4.5 billion year old solar system. Its orbit passes within sight of the earth at 76 year intervals, and its passing in 7 AD leads to the hypothesis that the journey of the Magi could have followed this 'star'. Giotto was fascinated with the heavens, as testified by his depiction of 700 golden stars on the vault, and he could not resist this opportunity for further demonstration of his realist approach.