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.

BOTTICELLI's SAN BARNABA ALTARPIECE

BOTTICELLI's SAN BARNABA ALTARPIECE

One Botticelli painting that may be overlooked when visiting the Uffizi Gallery was made for a minor church in Florence, San Barnaba, in 1488.

Easy to imagine it lighting up this space, his altarpiece of a Madonna and Child Enthroned with Four Angels and Six Saints. The painting is not just full of color, it is astonishingly compact! Twelve figures with attributes and symbols of the Passion within an altarpiece fashioned for this small altar in this small church in Florence on the corner of Via Guelfa and Via Panicale. Commissioned by the Guild for Doctors and Apothecaries (and also painters) (Arte dei Medici e Speziali,) the altarpiece is a magnificent performance by Botticelli to show what he did best:  graceful, elegant figures in a sacred conversation with harmonious symmetry and bright colors! Was he showing off for his fellow Guild members, the other painters and artists who would have belonged to the Guild and attended services in this church? His use of contrasting greens and reds certainly reflects well, literally, on the pigments the Guild was responsible for grinding as part of its industry.  Before examining the themes at work, however, let us first identify all the figures.

FROM THE LEFT, the SAINTS ARE:
St. Catherine - She was tortured on a spiked wheel which you see as her attribute right behind her.

Saint Augustine - writing in a book, presumably his Confessions, with a quill pen. He wears a bishop's mitre and cope since he was Bishop of Hippo in North Africa.


Next St. Barnabas, the name saint of the church. Who on earth is Saint Barnabas? and why is a church built to him in the city of Florence? Saint Barnabas was a Jew from Cyprus who converted to Christianity and then joined St. Paul in spreading the Christian message in countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea in the first century A.D. But he shows up in this altarpiece in a church named for him not in order to celebrate his martyrdom or his beneficial works, but because the Florentine Guelf Party won a victory over the Florentine Ghibellines in Camaldoli on St. Barnabas' FEAST DAY, June 11, 1289.

He is the saint whose intercession was believed to have caused the victory, so he is important enough, then, to be placed to the right of the Madonna. He is shown here with a long, dark beard and appears next to her with a book for his writings and an olive branch to symbolize the ensuing peace between the parties after the victory. But he is really only there because he is the patron saint of the church built for a battle won on his saint's day, no other connection. He doesn't even look at the Enthroned Child, he turns to regard Saint Augustine writing his Confessions, and perhaps surreptitiously, St. Catherine.

And he gives a back-handed (left handed) blessing to anyone in general, pointing to the Child for the sake of the spectator.
ON THE RIGHT from the viewer's perspective:
St. John the Baptist - he wears animal skins and red mantle and holds a cross staff, but he is there because the altarpiece was made for a Florentine church and he is the patron saint of Florence:

With his right hand he gestures towards an inscription at the base of the Madonna's throne which we will mention later.

Next to him is another Bishop who holds a red heart, Saint Ignatius of Antioch, whose heart was ripped from his body after martyrdom. Both he and Augustine wear white gloves that have a ruby
sewn into them to signify their special status as saint bishops:

Then comes an armored saint, presumably St. Michael, with wings, since he was an archangel. He holds a very thin-blade sword in one hand, an orb with an image of the countries around the Mediterranean in the other.

What a glorious young soldier, defender of the world is he!

We understand why Barnabas and John are chosen for the painting but what about the others? The Madonna is there because she was the protector of the Guild and the members dedicated themselves to her. But the four other saints and the four angels? Often the saints will stand in for the names of specific patrons, Catherine for the Abbess of a nunnery, for instance, associated with the church, Augustine, Ignatius, and Michael for the names of  prominent members of the Guild, but I do not know for certain in this painting.
THE ANGELS:
Two angels next to the Madonna hold, on the left, a crown of thorns of the type worn by Christ when he was mocked in Pilate's court, on the right, nails with arrow-pointed heads to remind us of the nailing of Christ to the cross. (In reality he was probably roped to the cross, but in the 15th-century they believed he was nailed.)

The other two angels pull back the ermine-lined curtain (ermine being the most expensive fur so worthy of a holy throne) to reveal the Madonna and Child and the shell-shape niche above them, with roundels of the Annunciation in bas-relief to either side of the shell.

The viewer has a joyful sense here of a young child with his mother at the beginning of his life,

with the Annunciation story above. We have a sense, too, that he is royalty, hence the ermine curtain. In sharp contrast with that joy are the angels with the symbols associated with Christ's death that make the viewer think about the ALPHA and OMEGA we so often see juxtaposed in Christian images from this period, the beginning and the end of Christ's life.

         Two other elements in the painting contribute to the meditation on death that underlies this joyous altarpiece. The inscription in Italian written on the step of the Madonna's throne

is a description of Mary found in Dante's Paradiso in his Divine Comedy, Chapter 33, line 1:

          VERGINE MADRE                               in English:     Virgin Mother

          FIGLIA DEL TUO FIGLIO                                       Daughter of your Son

These lines from Dante underscore the paradox of the Mother of Christ who was the protector of the Guild and whom the Guild members served: Mary was a virgin and yet became pregnant by God and had Jesus as a child. Because Jesus is also God, Mary, being the daughter of God, is also the daughter of her own Son. The mystery of the Virgin Birth as well as the mystery of Christ being the Son of God and also God are both included in these Italian phrases. What makes the words even more poignant in the setting is that Dante himself was a member of the Guild of the Medici and Speziali, so Botticelli is just painting into the throne of the Madonna and Child familiar concepts known to the Guild members because one of their previous alumni had written them. Secrets known to the ones who know, the ones who attended church in that place, but also now known to all who see the painting in the Uffizi.
         While most of the altarpiece radiates the lively joy of textures and touch, the underlying message "BEWARE the FUTURE" hangs over it all. Girolamo Savonarola had come to Florence twice by the time this altarpiece was painted, but his "doom and gloom" preaching began in earnest when he arrived back in the city in 1490 at the Church of San Marco, right down the street from the
Church of San Barnaba. The peril to come that Savonarola preached about is emphasized in the predella panels made for the bottom section of the altarpiece.
When complete, each saint would have had a panel below with a miniature scene depicting an episode from his/her life.

Only four of these are extant, the rest are lost:
Under St. Augustine the story is from the Golden Legend where Augustine is walking on a beach thinking about the concept of the Trinity (3-godheads in one - Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) and he comes upon a young boy who, with a shell, is scooping water from the ocean into a hole he has dug with a spoon. When Augustine points out to him the futility of trying to fill his hole with the the vast ocean, the boy replies, "Just as futile it is to think we can ever comprehend the deep mystery of the Trinity."

Under Jesus is a predella image of Christ after death with eyes closed and his wounds on display; on the tomb we see the nails and crown of thorns, but the Resurrection is intimated by the new plants springing from the tomb:

Under John the Baptist the image is of Salome carrying the platter with the head of the saint on it; she seems to be rushing to the right as if to bring a piece of meat to be carved at table:

And, under St. Ignatius, the predella shows two men examining Ignatius' heart after his death - legend had it that, after he died, they cut open his heart and found Christ's name written in gold letters on it.

The deaths of Christ, Ignatius, and John the Baptist are what are presented in the predella panels that have remained. The Augustine predella is about contemplation and part of his contemplation is about death. As viewers the predella panels remind us of our own mortality but also of the suffering that Christ, John the Baptist, and Ignatius endured for their deep faith. Would the predella panels under Catherine, Barnabas, and Michael have represented similar themes of suffering, martyrdom, and death? We can only hope they turn up some day so we can tell.

The overriding sense of this altarpiece is that if you suffer for your faith, the Madonna and Child will be revealed to you. Catherine looks up at the nails because she knows that kind of sharp torture.

Augustine writes down his thoughts of the problems of the life of the flesh.

Barnabas points to the Christ Child as the only way he has found peace,

Ignatius knows the suffering written on his heart. And Michael will judge everyone's soul after death; he is the weigher of souls in the afterlife, and here he holds the orb of the known world as a way of suggesting that every human being will be judged to determine where they will reside in the world to come.

Only John the Baptist is showing the suffering on his face, with mouth open as if to gasp his last breath before his head is taken from him. His eyes narrow from pain, but he, too, points to the inscription in which Dante tried to describe the great Christian mystery of faith.

All the saints know that life is not easy, but they insist in this nativity play with the beauty of their bodies and serious glances that the innocent child who is revealed by the angels helped them find a way to survive. Botticelli wants that beauty for himself, for his Guild, and for the viewers he knows will come after his own death.