The FUNNIEST NATIVITY

THE FUNNIEST NATIVITY

At first glance, Piero della Francesca's unfinished Nativity (dated 1470-75 by the National Gallery in London) seems a patchy conglomeration of all the elements one expects to find in a painted Nativity scene in the Renaissance:

a crumbling manger, ox and ass, two poor shepherds, St. Joseph sitting on a saddle, the kneeling Madonna, and the child lying on his mother's gown.
            The only figures added to the scene are the standing musicians serenading the child.
These five figures seem almost sculpted as if in a bas-relief, as though Piero della Francesca were
transporting the singing children he had seen in Luca della Robbia's Cantoria in Florence from an
earlier time (1431-9) to his hometown of Borgo San Sepolcro (near Arezzo.) The instruments are similar and even the babies are below in both cases here.

 

Della Robbia and Piero both set two musicians forward of the others; in Della Robbia's case the
two instrumentalists play citterns, in Piero's case, lutes. And Piero adds a third instrumentalist,
a lira da braccio or rebec player, the central figure who holds a bow with the right hand, the rebeca
(in Italian) with the left:

 

 

And just as in the side panels of the Luca piece, Piero lines up five heads in a stiff row,

presenting some of them with open mouths and some not.
There is no suggestion of wings on these figures, so, like the figures in the Della Robbia, they are not meant to be angels, they are ordinary children taking part in a reenactment of the holy scene, and in the case of Piero, they are dressed up for the special occasion with jewels on their heads and embroidered gowns on their bodies.

But, unlike in the Della Robbia bas-relief, Piero's children are trying hard not to laugh,

because while they are playing and trying to make harmony, the cow is nudging the arm of the lutenist on the right to get a better view, and behind them, the donkey is braying to high heaven and making a racket that probably drowns out their sound:

If that were not enough humor in the scene, Joseph crosses his legs showing his bare feet as he
looks away from the Madonna and Child, as if to say, "I have nothing to do with this birth."

It is worth noting that the saddle on which he sits has a water canteen leaning up against it, a motif that is present in Domenico Ghirlandaio's Nativity in Santa Trinita dated 1480-85,
 
and in Pinturicchio's Spello Nativity of 1500-01:

Because this particular motif is painted in Piero's Nativity and because these other two Nativities are later than the 1470's, I think Piero's Nativity should be dated after the Ghirlandaio and before the Pinturicchio, somewhere in the late 1480's. Such a dating would help explain why the painting is unfinished, since Vasari mentions Piero going blind in 1486 (he dies in 1492.)  His blindness would also explain why this Nativity emphasizes the sounds (of the singers, of the musicians, of the donkey). 

       But back to the humor - not finished...

The shepherds who appear in most Nativity scenes with the Holy Family are here in Piero's Nativity, too. But although they are poor, as they are in both Ghirlandaio's and Pinturicchio's, they are also

unbeknownst to them, dim-witted, as though Piero were poking fun at them (they almost look blind, too, strangely):

The one on the left, dressed in Franciscan brown habit, points to the hole in the roof, where grass

has begun to grow. Is he showing Joseph the sky through the hole to tell him about the star that

brought them all to Bethlehem? If so, there is no star, so he points at an empty hole in the roof. Or is it a gesture to remind the viewer of the ruin of the manger and the new life in it? The other shepherd holds a weapon (hammer to remind us of the end of Christ's life, to make us think he's shown up for the wrong play?) 

 

at the ready, as if he is tense and waiting to say his line in a medieval mystery play. In fact, the whole of the scene has the feel of a local amateur production of the story of the Nativity, with all the things that can go wrong in such productions: the donkey braying, the shepherd's off-color gesturing, the bare feet of Joseph, and then the BIRD! 

 The magpie perches on the manger roof just over the heads of the singers. 

In Florentine lore, bird droppings on your head are meant to be seen as a sign of good luck,

and the presence of a bird over the heads of participants in Nativity scenes has a certain precedent.

Botticelli's Adoration of the Three Kings for Santa Maria Novella of 1475, for example, has a peacock perching precariously over the heads of bystanders.

But the peacock has a positive significance in that it was thought in the Renaissance to represent

eternal life, while the magpie is thought of as a thief and a noisy chatterer. Perfect for our Piero

Nativity to compete with the braying, singing, and pointing:

That only leaves the side sections of the painting to analyze. The town on the right has a tower that

is identical (three openings and a spire) to the main church campanile (bell tower) in Piero's home town of Borgo San Sepolcro:

 

With his placement of the town in the background, he is saying two things:

1) Borgo San Sepolcro (The Town of the Holy Sepulchre) is Jerusalem and the Nativity takes place

in a town away from Jerusalem, Bethlehem.

2) This Nativity, as a local reenactment, is even less refined than a production of the same scene would be in town. This Nativity is produced on a hillside in the countryside, which excuses its particular oddities and lack of grace.

The left side of the painting has a long-distance view of a monastic settlement nestled under a cliff by

a curling river, in whose reflections we see the sky and the landscape mirrored.

 Monte Cucco monastery

                                                                                                                      

Does he have in mind a local monastery right behind Gubbio in the cliffs of Monte Cucco?

or perhaps the Franciscan settlement on the cliffs of La Verna, not very far from Borgo San Sepolcro?

                                                             La Verna monastery

Whatever the case, he means to set his scene far from urban life, far from a civilized plan,

in order to paint the "hokiness" of this amateur attempt to recreate the birth of Christ. Human

it is, and full of ordinary people trying their best to be holy, but the painter wants the viewer

to look at the center of the painting, and laugh with the donkey and be happy for Christmas.

Better to laugh than to weep at the irony of a great painter going blind.         

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THE MOST SERIOUS NATIVITY!

THE MOST SERIOUS NATIVITY!

One of the reasons for Christianity's appeal is that it follows the life cycle of one man, from BIRTH to DEATH to AFTERLIFE. The celebration of the Death occurs in the Northern Hemisphere in the spring and is given a balancing levity with the joy of the Resurrection and at Easter in the same season.
The Birth should be a joyous occasion, as most births are, but the birth in this case is always celebrated in the solemnity and dead of Winter in the Northern Hemisphere. And often in Nativity scenes as painted in the Renaissance you can find references to the Death. In the example above, for instance, Domenico Ghirlandaio's Nativity painted in 1480-5 as an altarpiece for the Sassetti Chapel in the church of Santa Trinita in Florence, the child lies on the ground (well, actually on his mother's robe on the ground) directly in front of an ancient Roman sarcophagus that is decorated with a wreath and a Latin inscription: 

Ense cadens. Solymo. Pompei Fulvius
                           Augur
Numen Ait Quae Me Conteg
                     Urna Dabit
While Fulvius, Augur of Pompey, was falling by the sword, he said: the urn that enshrouds me shall
serve for a god.

The inscription refers to a prophecy by Fulvius, as he was slain by Sulla, that his burial sarcophagus would be used as a birthplace for a god. The references to the past and the future are contained within the same open tomb. The baby's head leans (complete with foreshortened halo) up against the tomb and we are meant to remember Christ's death at the moment of his birth, the Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, of Christ's life.
         In this case the painter paints himself into the painting as a shepherd witnessing the birth. He kneels and points to the Child and garland with his left hand and to himself with his right hand.

Since Domenico's real last name was Bigordi and his nickname Ghirlandaio or Garland-Maker, the wreath on the sarcophagus presents a second kind of signature. The ox and ass stand behind the sarcophagus and Joseph looks up in the sky at the angel who has brought the tidings of the birth.

As in most Italian Renaissance Nativities, the past in relation to Christ's birth is represented in the back of the scene, while the figure of the baby lies in the foreground. So behind the child is the old faith, represented in the ancient pagan sarcophagus, the pilaster with Corinthian capital, and in the Roman triumphal arch with the Latin inscription to Pompey the Great
 "Gn[eo] Pompeo Magno Hircanus Pont[ifex] P[osuit]" ("The priest Hircanus erected [this arch] in honor of Gnaius Pompey the Great").  The most visible letters are POMPEO MAGNO HIRCA.
The irony here is that Pompey had had a triumphal arch erected for his own success on the battlefield, but the baby in the foreground is presented as triumphing over any material success of a Roman general. (The background is read as in the past chronologically, so that even the earlier story of the
angel coming to the shepherds is set in the background.) The old pagan beliefs of Rome have been superseded by the belief in Christ as the new God. The present time is emphasized by the artist in the pilaster with the end date of the painting, 1485, that leads the viewer's eye down to the child who looks out at the viewer.

 

             In the far distance the Three Kings (Magi) who are travelling from the East to bring presents to the child are shown on horseback under the arch. They can be identified by the slight suggestions of crowns on their heads, by their being singled out under the arc of the arch, and by the fact that they are represented as the three Ages of man, middle-aged, old, and young, from
left to right.

Their beliefs are also taken over by the Christian faith in the front, so they are not prominent or easy to see.

The sarcophagus, arch, and roof of the temple are all damaged, passe. The baby is at the center and is the focus of the shepherds, animals, and mother, if not the figure of Joseph. As has been pointed out by Leo Steinberg, the child is naked so that we don't forget that, even though he is a God, he is a human baby boy; the humanity of the story is emphasized here.
           But Ghirlandaio, though an extremely talented painter, does not show much of a sense of humor in this scene. All is seriousness in the takeover by Christianity of the pagan beliefs of old. And the sarcophagus reminds us that this story ends in tragedy, the child living to age 33 when he is put to death on a cross (that, too, suggested in the Corinthian pillar with cross beams in the roof.)
 









When painting for the serious banker and his wife, the Sassetti patrons in this case, Ghirlandaio makes sure they are reassured that their payment for Christian scenes is a worthy investment. They are, after all, kneeling and facing in towards the altarpiece from either side in the chapel. These wall frescoes are also painted by Ghirlandaio.

 Nera Corsi, wife of Francesco Sassetti                                                                   Francesco Sassetti

 

Under them an appropriate date, 25th December, 1480, the day the contract was signed, 1480 years after the original Birth. (Anno Domini 1480, 25 December)

       The painter points to the Child for them because they pray for the salvation of their souls after death through this Birth. It explains why the painter doesn't really look at the shepherd next to him; he is looking beyond him to the kneeling patron.

The Latin inscription on the frame says, "Ipsum quem genuit adoravit Maria" ("Mary knelt before the very one to whom she had given birth") (my trans.)

The patrons kneel as Mary does, the artist kneels as Mary does. The child signifies a new beginning in a way that is more than just a newborn come into the world. He signifies for the believers the chance not to ever die.
Merry Christmas, indeed!