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John 11: 30-44
Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there.

Then Mary, when she came where Jesus was and saw him, fell at his feet, saying to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled; and he said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see."

Jesus wept. So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!" But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?" Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb; it was a cave, and a stone lay upon it.

Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days." Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?"

So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. I knew that thou hearest me always, but I have said this on account of the people standing by, that they may believe that thou didst send me."

When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out." The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with bandages, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go."

Giotto makes narrative from story first by a rigorous selection of the critical events with nothing outside the event to distract attention.

Then he compresses the events into the restricted frame of the picture surface, compressing not only action but time, since all the important stages of the story are contained in the presentation.

Boldly, he places the two principal figures, not in the center as custom would have it but at the sides. The center is occupied by an astonished onlooker who is the junction and transmitter of the currents of feeling that flow back and forth across the picture surface. He looks toward Lazarus while gesturing back toward Jesus. Next to him is an older man gesturing toward Lazarus as he holds one of the grave cloths while he looks back toward Jesus, a chiastic flow of attention and healing force. Mary and Martha are kneeling, almost prostrated, before Jesus as they look up trustingly; the Gospel account has this taking place before the raising.