When the wealthy Paduan banker Enrico Scrovegni commissioned the building of his eponymous chapel in the 14th century, he made sure that he was immortalised in the lavish frescoes adorning its interior. Florentine artist Giotto depicted Scrovegni, clad in robes of penitential violet, holding up a model of his chapel as a devotional offering. Just beyond Scrovegni’s eyeline, in a tableau of the Last Judgment, cavorting demons consign sinners to hell, a fate he presumably sought to avoid through his earthly largesse.
Donors and patrons have always insinuated themselves into art and architecture – whether in name or depiction – reminding onlookers of them and their piety and munificence. The image of Scrovegni and his chapel reverberates across the centuries in the portrait of American private equity mogul Stephen A Schwarzman – another man of wealth and taste – which presides discreetly over Oxford University’s new Centre for the Humanities. Named after and bankrolled by Schwarzman to the tune of £185m, it is the largest single gift since the Renaissance.
