Joachim among the Shepherds

A small white dog rises towards Joachim, its forelegs lifted and its muzzle pointing up at him. The old man scarcely seems to move. His head drops forward, his hands disappear into the folds of his rose-coloured mantle, and the weight of the garment makes his whole figure seem to incline towards the ground. Beside him, two young shepherds stand together. Sheep crowd out of a shelter on the right. Above them, rocks and trees rise into an open blue sky.

In Joachim among the Shepherds, Giotto gives an arrival the weight of a major event. There is no miracle to identify at a glance, and no angel yet enters the landscape. What holds the picture together is the unequal encounter between a withdrawn man, the people awaiting him and the animal that comes forward. The scene is the second compartment from the left in the upper register of the Scrovegni Chapel's south wall, described by the Padua catalogue as the right wall. The institution records its dimensions as approximately 208 by 220 centimetres and dates it broadly to the early fourteenth century. ^[1] The chapel's larger account places the fresco cycle in 1303–05. ^[2]

Why Joachim has come to the mountains

Joachim is Mary's father in the religious legends that supply the opening episodes of the chapel's Marian narrative. His story here precedes Mary's birth, and therefore also the birth of Christ. These shepherds belong to Joachim's flocks; they are not the shepherds who will hear the announcement of the Nativity. Understanding that distinction changes the atmosphere of the landscape. This is a place to which a shamed man has withdrawn, before the news that will bring him home.

The preceding Expulsion of Joachim shows the cause of his departure. In the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, a priest called Ruben rejects Joachim's participation in the offerings because he has no children. Joachim leaves in tears and goes to his flocks, taking shepherds into a distant mountainous country. His wife Anna hears nothing of him for five months. Her anxiety concerns his unexplained absence as well as their childlessness: she does not even know whether he is alive. ^[3]

These events belong to an apocryphal Christian narrative, outside the canonical Gospels. The accusation against Joachim is part of its account of unjust humiliation, not a reliable statement that infertility reveals divine punishment. The related Gospel of the Nativity of Mary makes that distinction explicit. After describing the priest's rejection, it gives an angel a reply that separates wrongdoing from the condition of childlessness and calls the reproach against Joachim unjust. ^[23] Giotto's haloed figure, expelled and then bowed among his flocks, is the person whose standing the unfolding story will vindicate.

The flocks also carry a practical meaning. Pseudo-Matthew introduces Joachim as a prosperous owner whose animals and wool support gifts to the poor, religious service and his own household. Even during his withdrawal, he tells the angel that his servants will continue distributing portions to those in need. ^[3] The sheep in this picture therefore belong to the circumstances of his life. His retreat takes him away from home, but into an estate and a working community that are already his own.

A body lowered towards the dog

Joachim occupies the left side of the foreground, almost the full height of its inhabited lower zone. His halo rises against the pale rock, while his beard, brow and downturned eyes concentrate attention on the inclination of his head. His shoulders slope beneath the mantle. Its long folds run towards the ground, gathering around the concealed arms before opening into a broad, heavy hem. A small dark shoe appears below. The body's structure is made legible through the cloth, even though so little of the body is exposed.

That concealment matters. Neither arm reaches towards the shepherds. There is no open palm, raised greeting or broad gesture of explanation. The pale dog supplies almost all the immediate movement between Joachim and the group opposite him. Its hind feet remain near the ground while its chest and forelegs rise. Its narrow body makes a low horizontal bridge across the interval, and its lifted head turns that bridge upwards towards the man's face.

In a small reproduction, the difference in scale can make the exchange easy to overlook. Joachim's mantle occupies a large area of subdued pink; the dog is a slim white shape beside its hem. Yet the dog interrupts the empty ground between the people. Its light coat stands out against the rock and the shaded lower edges of the garments. Without moving the principal figures closer together, Giotto creates a point of contact just above their feet.

Padua's catalogue describes the dog's liveliness as affectionate, set against Joachim's lowered bearing. ^[1] The visible arrangement supports that reading: the animal approaches him, and his head inclines towards its raised muzzle. It does not establish exactly what Joachim thinks about the greeting. His hands remain covered, and the picture withholds any obvious answering action. The little encounter can offer warmth while leaving the old man's withdrawal intact.

Joachim lowers his head and hands as the dog rises towards him, beside the two shepherds. Image source. Public domain. Cropped and proportionally reduced reproduction; no colour or content enhancement.

His halo also prevents the lowered posture from becoming a simple statement of defeat. It remains conspicuous above a face directed downwards. A viewer can see both his sacred status within the story and his present vulnerability. Giotto holds those conditions together without requiring Joachim to look out of the painting or appeal directly to the spectator.

What are the shepherds doing?

The two shepherds form a compact group to the right of the dog. The nearer figure wears a short grey-lilac tunic and holds a long staff upright. His other hand hangs down beside his body. His companion is wrapped in a pale rose mantle and turns towards him, holding a small object close to his chest. Their exposed lower legs and work clothes distinguish them from Joachim's enveloping, decorated robe. They share the foreground with their employer, but their appearance belongs to the daily business of tending the flock.

Their heads create a different pattern from Joachim's. One face is presented more fully to the viewer, while the other is seen in profile towards his companion. Neither offers the unmistakable frontal welcome that an outstretched hand or a step towards Joachim could have provided. The staff adds an upright line between the old man's descending figure and the young men's steadier bodies. Across this narrow interval, the contrast between stillness and the dog's movement becomes particularly clear.

Michael Viktor Schwarz reads the shepherds as withholding a welcome. In his interpretation, the exchange between them continues Joachim's rejection by other people, while the dog offers the greeting that the humans fail to supply. He connects the episode with the lamb Joachim holds in the previous scene and sees the resulting low point as preparation for the angelic interventions that follow. ^[24] This is a forceful reading of the sequence, rather than an objective description of every face.

Looking at the fresco leaves room for hesitation. The direction of a painted eye is less unambiguous than the turn of an entire head, and the shepherds' proximity can suggest conversation without revealing its subject. Their reserve may trouble the encounter, but the picture supplies no words from which to reconstruct their discussion. A dog visibly approaches; two people stand together; Joachim inclines towards the ground. Giotto makes the relationships precise while leaving the conversation inaccessible.

The apocryphal stories also caution against treating the shepherds as permanently hostile characters. Later in Pseudo-Matthew, Joachim's hired servants fear he is dead when they find him lying in prayer. They help raise him, hear his account of the angel and urge him to return to Anna. After the confirming dream, the herdsmen again encourage his departure. ^[3] Whatever reserve Giotto gives the two men at this first encounter, their narrative role can develop. They belong to the community through which Joachim's return becomes possible.

Rocks, trees and a crowded flock

The landscape is unusually generous to a scene with only three human figures. A long pale ridge runs behind them, rising on the right into a tall, blunt rock formation. Its edges and shaded faces give it a tangible thickness. Above and behind the ridge, separate trees punctuate the blue. Their crowns vary in size and shape: some spread into broad, rounded masses, while others are narrower or partly concealed. Small trunks make them distinct growing things rather than an unbroken ornamental border.

The height of the sky affects the pace of looking. Human gestures occupy the bottom of the field, while a large expanse remains above them. The terrain situates the encounter in the mountains without filling that upper space with other incidents. Following the trees from left to right leads eventually to the high rock, then down towards the shelter roof and the flock. The landscape supplies a broad circuit around the small exchange at ground level.

The shelter is pressed against the right edge. Its roof is rendered as a series of pale overlapping courses, with a dark rectangular opening beneath. The opening gives the flock a place from which to emerge. Heads crowd together in its shadow; bodies accumulate outside it and spread across the foreground. The sheep are differentiated through profile, angle and overlapping woolly surfaces. Several lower their heads, while others look sideways from within the group. A horned animal near the centre foreground adds a stronger curling contour to the tangle of legs, backs and muzzles.

This density balances Joachim's comparatively solitary shape. On the left, one mantle gathers a body into a large continuous form. On the right, repeated backs and heads break the flock into many small units. The two shepherds stand between those masses, and the dog moves across the more open ground beside Joachim. The scene's organisation remains clear even though the bottom edge is busy with animals.

The landscape offers shelter, grazing and the familiar presence of a flock, but Giotto does not make it a place of uncomplicated escape. The rock rises close behind the people; the little building is occupied by animals; Joachim stands outside. There is enough space to distinguish each relationship, with no distant road that would draw attention away from this arrival. The terrain gives the figures somewhere substantial to stand and gives Joachim's pause a duration that a brief verbal account cannot supply.

Forty days and five months

The different versions of Joachim's retreat should be kept distinct. In the Protoevangelium of James, the challenge to his offering comes from Rubim. Joachim examines the tribal records, remembers Abraham and withdraws to the desert, where he pitches a tent and fasts for forty days and forty nights. Anna mourns both childlessness and what she experiences as widowhood. A named maidservant, Judith, exchanges bitter words with her before Anna goes into the garden to pray. ^[25]

Anne receives a separate promise in her house while Joachim is absent. Image source. Public domain. Proportionally reduced reproduction; no colour or content enhancement.

Pseudo-Matthew instead gives the five-month period during which Anna has no news. Its account places the servant's harsh response after Anna has seen the angel, returned to her bedchamber and spent a day and night trembling and praying. Chapter 3 then develops a longer sequence for Joachim: a waking encounter with the messenger, a sacrifice, prolonged prayer, the servants' concern and a confirming dream. The messenger tells him that he has already appeared to Anna that day. ^[3] These are separate stages in that version, rather than interchangeable descriptions of a single announcement.

In the Gospel of the Nativity of Mary, Joachim retires to shepherds already in their pastures because he fears renewed reproach at home. After an unspecified interval, an angel appears to him alone in a great light. The promise includes a future meeting with Anna at Jerusalem's Golden Gate; an announcement to Anna follows in the next chapter. ^[23] Here the retreat is not assigned the same explicit forty-day or five-month measure.

Giotto's fresco does not contain an inscription counting the days. The five months repeated in the Padua account belongs to the Pseudo-Matthew tradition, while the forty-day fast belongs to James's narrative. The two numbers should not be turned into consecutive portions of one securely dated journey. What the painting makes visible is more immediate: a man has reached the flocks, and the consequences of his humiliation have travelled with him.

Why a quiet arrival receives a whole panel

Within the opening sequence, Joachim among the Shepherds falls between the Temple rejection and the Annunciation to St Anne. Joachim's sacrifice, his dream and the reunion at the Golden Gate then carry the story towards return. ^[26] The shepherd scene delays that resolution. It gives the viewer time to see what exclusion looks like after the person responsible for it has disappeared from view.

The contrast with the preceding fresco is concrete. There Joachim holds a small lamb close to his chest as an outstretched arm directs him away from the Temple. Here his hands are enclosed and the animal approaches him. In the following Anne scene, an angel enters the upper part of a domestic interior while Anne kneels below. The change from this open, apparently uneventful landscape to a room receiving a heavenly visitor makes the turn towards reassurance unmistakable. Giotto distributes rejection, withdrawal and announcement across distinct places and encounters.

Schwarz also approaches the scene from the organisation of the chapel as a whole. He proposes that the prominence assigned to the Annunciation on the triumphal arch helped determine the extended account of Mary's earlier history. As an example of that expansion, he points to the full compartment devoted to Joachim's journey to the shepherds, an action the narrative can state very briefly. ^[27] His explanation concerns the planning of the cycle; it does not settle the value of the finished painting by the length of its textual prompt.

The panel rewards the time given to it. The long mantle, the staff, the uneven ridge, the sheep pressing from the doorway and the small dog all contribute different kinds of movement and stillness. Joachim has reached people who know him, yet he remains apart from their close grouping. The dog crosses a little of that distance. Before the angels speak and before the family is reunited, Giotto lets that small, incomplete approach occupy the foreground.