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One of the most valuable Western works of art is housed in this church built to repay the sins of the father.
The Scrovegni Chapel was built to atone for the wages of greed, however it ended up becoming home to one of the great works of Western art. The chapel was built in 1305 by wealthy Italian banker Enrico Scrovegni. The young Scrovegni’s father had been a notorious user, or purveyor of bad loans, charging so much interest as to crush those that owed him money. At the time this practice was considered so vile as to end someone’s soul in hell. Scrovegni’s father was so well-known for his illegal interest that he is even name-checked in Dante’s Divine Comedy as one of the souls in the Seventh Circle of Hell. While the building itself is architecturally unremarkable, Scrovegni was able to retain the services of one of the most renowned artists of the time to decorate the interior.
