GHIRLANDAIO's INNOCENTI ADORATION

GHIRLANDAIO'S INNOCENTI ADORATION  

Around the same time that Botticelli was painting the San Barnabas Altarpiece, (see previous blog entry) 1485-88, Ghirlandaio was painting this large altarpiece for the church associated with the
Hospital of the Innocents, the first public orphanage in Florence. The Ghirlandaio painting was
removed from the church of Santa Maria degli Innocenti in 1786 and installed in the museum of the
Ospedale degli Innocenti in 1917.

Exterior of Brunelleschi's Ospedale degli Innocenti, 1419; museum now is the long hall where windows perch above the arches on the second floor:
 Della Robbia swaddled children on exterior in roundels:

Model and Plan of Hospital of the Innocents:

 

The YELLOW X marks the large courtyard (for the boys) and the PURPLE X marks the girls'

courtyard. Today there is still a daycare center in the building.  

 

The altarpiece in situ in what used to be the boys' dormitory:

Since the altarpiece was commissioned by the Guild that also paid Brunelleschi to create the building,
the Arte della Seta (guild of the silk workers,) the commissioners wanted a painting showing the Three Magi paying homage to Jesus as a child; they chose the Adoration of the Magi as the subject for their altar.

The three wise men, Magi, representing the three ages of man, youth, middle-age, and old age,

come with gifts for the Christ child:  gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The youngest on the left, with

blond hair, holds the myrrh in a crystal goblet:

The oldest king kneels below him and kisses the foot of the child. He has placed his gold gift on

the step. The middle-aged king wears a purple robe and hold the container for frankincense.

 

All three kings usually have crowns to identify them as kings.The crown for the oldest king looks like a gilded baseball cap and appears in front of the kneeling child. 

Where are the other two crowns? The two fancy hats worn by the guild members on the right look

bejewelled enough to be crowns, but does Ghirlandaio mean to suggest that they hold the crowns

for the kings until they take them back?

Just as, anachronistically, the Holy Family and the Kings and the saints all wear the gorgeous silk brocades of the 15th-century Silk Guild?

It is certainly true that the Silk Guild liked their wares being promoted this way in the altarpiece they

paid for. And before we think that that self-promotion is old-fashioned, we have only to look at the portraits that Ghirlandaio did of the prominent members of the Guild over on the right. These portraits look remarkably like contemporary members of the Corteo Storico in Florence:

Ghirlandaio knew how to please his customer. But that is not the only reason for this display of material wealth. In order to understand what else is going on in this painting, we must examine the

other subjects depicted.

In the Background Left:
The Massacre of the Innocents - the killing of all children up to the age of one by Herod when he heard that a new king had been born who would end up ruling over the Jews and Romans:

 

In this scene Roman soldiers with swords go after mothers with their babies as the women try to escape the slaughter.
Behind the figure group Ghirlandaio painted various iconic
buildings in Rome, as he remembered them after having spent several years there to paint on the walls of the Sistine Chapel. We can see the Colosseum, the Torre delle Milizie,
and the Pyramid of Cestius as well as Trajan's Column. Is
the new St. Peter's what he imagines on the top of the hill?
(The St. Peter's we see today was only begun in 1503.) But he is depicting Rome here to stand in for Jerusalem, and the Adoration scene takes place at a distance from the city, in  Bethlehem.
In the background right:
The Annunciation to the Shepherds:

Two shepherds can be seen looking up at the angel flying down to tell them about the birth.

Those same two shepherds, dressed in dark grey, reappear behind the Holy Family, as witnesses to the birth.

The artist inserts the date of the completion of the altarpiece 1488, in Roman numerals on the triumphal arch to the right:

Above the heads of the holy family fly four singing angels who unfurl a banner with the song they are singing:  GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO - Glory Be to God in the Highest, the phrase the Bible says was sung by angels when Jesus was born:

How like these angels the current daycare children dressed in white seem:

But those additions are not enough for Ghirlandaio. He includes a self-portrait over on the left behind the young king; the artist looks out at the viewer with serious intent.


And to the left of him, dressed in black, is the
Prior of the Ospedale, Francesco di Giovanni
Tesori; St. John's cross points to and appropriately emblazons his chest.

But the piece de resistance in this painting is barely discernible from afar. Ghirlandaio has painted into the foreground of the scene two kneeling babies, two innocents, the INNOCENTI for whom the building was conceived, the orphans of 15th-century Italy.

The one on the right is guided forward by St. John the Evangelist. The one on the left is looked out for by St. John the Baptist, patron saint of the city of Florence.

The children face away from the viewer and toward the Holy Family and the Three Kings; they, too, are paying homage to the Christ Child, who is even younger than they are. But are these the swaddling children whose parents abandoned them to the care of the community? These toddlers have haloes, white gowns, and THEY ARE BLEEDING!

The one on the right has blood dripping from a cut on his left arm.
The one on the left has his face, neck, and arm pock-marked with bloody gouges, as though he were a child-flagellant.

Both lift hands in prayer as though begging for salvation from the child who, as a man later, says, "Suffer the little children to come unto me."

One of the messages Ghirlandaio conveys with the presence of these wounded children in the foreground is that Florence takes care of its innocents, orphans, unlike Rome, in the background,
where children are being slaughtered. But he is also painting an essay on innocence itself, wounded in every century, needing protection from saints and community leaders. These Innocenti in white  gowns with sparkling gold haloes, are souls of children, who seek to retain their innocence even as they are praying to be relieved of their suffering.

 

The pathos of their plight as orphans might not be as deeply felt by the viewer if Ghirlandaio had not

painted them bleeding. They would have been ordinary toddlers present at the birth of the Christ Child. Recent studies of the Hospital of the Innocents indicate that it was not only unwanted pregnancies that were solved by the institution, but that the women who were the wet-nurses in Florence for the patrician women left their children under the care of the institution while they took care of the children of the wealthier women. The altarpiece tries to make up for that injustice by

suggesting that these babies, no matter whose, are important to promote and tenderly mind.

The blood droplets remind the viewer of the blood shed by Jesus for all souls at the Crucifixion, but they also remind the viewer that the altarpiece was also made for children abandoned at birth, wounded from the beginning, who need special care and comfort. And what could be more comforting than to be surrounded by caring adults and enveloped by beautiful swaths of silk cloth!

The implication is that the wealth of the Guild will provide for them. We, as twenty-first century viewers, are left to wonder how innocence will be protected in our own time.