BOTTICELLI'S MYSTICAL NATIVITY

BOTTICELLI'S MYSTICAL NATIVITY

Toward the end of his life Botticelli painted a small vertical painting with a Nativity scene in
the middle:

This oil-on-canvas painting is dated 1500 and now in the National Gallery in London. We do not know of a patron or church that might have ordered this subject, so scholars have speculated that
Botticelli painted it as a personal private devotional piece, perhaps for himself.  Since we know that his brother was a devotee of Savonarola, the fiery Dominican preacher who is raised to the position of head of state of the Florentine Republic in 1495 and three years later is burned at the stake in front of Palazzo Vecchio in Florence in 1498,

many have also seen in this painting the remnants of Savonarolian apocalyptic visions. Certainly the figures in the lower third of the picture are suggestive of the sermons Savonarola gave in Florence about wrestling with the devil.

We see Florentines (dressed in red) embracing angels with wings as devils scurry underground behind and in front of them.
          The rest of the painting is also not just a Nativity scene. Though Mary and Joseph look down
upon a restless baby, above their heads on the roof of the manger are kneeling 3 figures of the CARDINAL VIRTUES - FAITH in white, HOPE in green, and CHARITY or LOVE in red in the center. These VIRTUES are singing angels with a choir book held and shared among them.

Next to the central scene of ADORATION of the CHILD are two separate subjects, one on each side. On the left is the ADORATION OF THE MAGI.

The three Magi are in the tradition of three ages of man, (oldest in green, middle aged in red, youngest in yellow), wear crowns made out of laurel leaves instead of proper crowns, and are led to the Nativity scene by an angel.
On the right is the ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS; two shepherds, also crowned with laurel leaves but dressed in rustic country clothing, are brought to the central miracle by another angel who helps one of the shepherds to adjust the laurel crown on his head.

Since both the Magi and the shepherds wear natural crowns, both kneel, and both are attended by similar angels, there seems to be a leveling of distinction of ranks. The crowns are removed from the 3 KINGS and lifted high in the sky with the dancing angels. Each crown in the angel group above is attached to an olive branch with a banner.

In fact, ALL of the angels in the painting carry OLIVE BRANCHES, signs of PEACE, and the reconciliation of angel with citizen in the lower part of the painting is an echo of the reconciliation going on in the rest of the painting, with the kings and shepherds gathering in the same space with the holy figures and with the VIRTUES singing together above their heads.

The mother's adoring face and the light on the child who looks up at her with rapt attention
as he sucks on his fingers are the central focus of the painting.

Directly behind Mary is a backlit meadow, the symbolic light of the world that we read in the figure of the baby.

The peace of the olive branches, angels, sweet faces, embracing figures are meant to evoke the
reassurance that, while devils may scurry and kings and shepherds may come and go, the story of
Christianity will remain as a central tenet, the notion that God loved the world enough to send his
son to sacrifice his life for human sin.
           The Greek inscription, left in rubble condition, at the top of the painting, speaks of the mystery of this tenet:

          "This picture, at the end of the year 1500, in the troubles of Italy, I Alessandro, in the half-time after the time, painted, according to the eleventh [chapter] of Saint John, in the second woe of the Apocalypse, during the release of the devil for three-and-a-half years; then he shall be bound in the twelfth [chapter] and we shall see [him buried] as in this picture."
The inscription names the artist and speaks of the devil after three years' release. Some scholars have thought the inscription referred to the death of Savonarola.

If the three Florentine citizens are meant to be the monk Savonarola with the two men (also monks) who were hanged with him, why do they not wear monks' robes? Could the artist be imagining the arrival of the three religious men in the heavenly world after their deaths, since they never received a proper burial? (Their ashes were scattered in the Arno River.) On the other hand, is Botticelli perhaps celebrating here the death of Savonarola after three years' reign? Perhaps the three Florentines are Botticelli and two others, released by his death after having been spiritually bound to the monk during his lifetime.
        The messages written on the ribbons carried by the angels above are small phrases meant to define the Virgin Mary -daughter of her Son, bride of God, mother of her father - which were mentioned in a sermon Savonarola gave about the Virgin. (The messages have only been seen in infra-red technology.) The Virgin is clearly the center of the drama here, but the earthly world is only part of the picture. The upper third of the picture represents a golden dome of heaven with 12 angels moving in a circle. The circle moves counterclockwise from down below, clockwise if you think of looking at it from above it.
          What are the angels meant to display for the viewer? They carry olive branches, crowns, and originally carried the inscriptions about the Virgin. They are her dancing representatives in HEAVEN, imagined as a golden dome in the sky above the world. But, as with all things created by Botticelli, the dance is also a SYMBOL. And what kind of dance is it? Botticelli must have watched dance masters during his lifetime give instructions in dance, which they did in person and in dance treatises, where dances appear written for the first time in known history, STEP by STEP, in ITALIAN. This dance is not one specifically described in those treatises, but the dance figures remain.
          As an artist Botticelli is always interested in the FEET of his figures and he understood, as Donatello did before him, the principle of DISNEY ANIMATION: that to create believable movement, you must recreate the motion in STEP SEQUENCES. SO LET US LOOK AT THE FEET OF THE ANGELS here:

If we begin with the angel in pink robe in the center front, she faces left, the direction of the dance, and she steps out on her LEFT foot. The next angel to her left, in white robe, steps with her weight on her RIGHT FOOT.  If we follow all the 12 angels in the circle, they continue the sequence begun by these two: LEFT RIGHT, LEFT RIGHT, LEFT RIGHT, LEFT RIGHT, LEFT RIGHT, LEFT RIGHT,
which returns us to the angel in pink robe again, who steps on her LEFT. No matter where you begin
in the circle, the angel's foot with the weight on it is the opposite one of the angel to either side of her.
What Botticelli is conveying in this elegant image is the IDEA of ETERNITY. The steps are continuous and do not stop. The movement follows as though one figure moves around the circle
in continuous motion. A more beautiful way to imagine ETERNAL LIFE in HEAVEN I have never seen painted elsewhere.
          The angels of the Virgin dance her eternal steps above her head in the golden globe of a heavenly sky.
    All the human creatures in this story are attended by comforting angels: the Florentines down below, the shepherds on the right, the kings on the left, and Mary, Joseph, and the baby by the angels on the roof. There are 8 of them, numbered here from FAITH as 1 to the far left angel as 8.




















If the painting is alluding to the Second Coming of Christ, and the future fate of human beings on earth, the scene seems a glorious vision of hope, faith, and love. Everyone is accepted, everyone has the Child to look to, everyone has dancing angels hovering over them. And the devils are quite overpowered by the sights and with hardly a look back, are banished to the underworld.

What a blessed view
 
Botticelli paints to assuage the painful torments of PTSD - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder! He has lived through papal patronage, he has seen those kings of the church overthrown when Pope Sixtus dies in 1484 and the Sistine Chapel work dries up. He has lived through Medici patronage, almost Medici kingship, he has seen those kings overthrown when Giuliano dies in the Pazzi Conspiracy in 1478 and when Lorenzo dies of natural causes in 1492. And he has seen Savonarola triumph as an orator and government leader in 1495, only to be killed by the crowd three years later. As an artist Botticelli still has his art and can soothe himself with images that will provide a sense of the ongoing power of his faith.
          The eternal circle dance of his 12 angels together with the encircling composition of 8 angels around the holy figures ensure a peaceful protection of his religious feelings, even while the tumult of the outside world has battered them with its instability.































As his own life draws to a close, he wishes to create reconciliation and eternal love in whirling circles of angels. That the dancing angels step in sequence means that the dance will never end, the light of the world will keep going. For someone who had illustrated Dante's Divine Comedy, it was important to keep the devils at bay, at least in paint.

CHRONOLOGY in LUCA's CANTORIA

CHRONOLOGY IN LUCA'S CANTORIA 

As we mentioned in a previous blog on Luca della Robbia's Cantoria, some discussion should be given to the order in which the panels were sculpted. Luca's Cantoria for the Florence Cathedral (now in the new Museo dell'Opera del Duomo in Florence) was produced between 1431 and 1438.

 

The documents that survive tell of payments in 1434 to Luca for two large panels and two smaller ones, which suggest that two panels from the front were finished by then and the two side panels which are smaller in size. 

 

Which front panels were sculpted first then? Since the panels were carved separately from the architectural console holding them, the inscription words do not tell us the order of the sculpting, just the order of instruments mentioned in Psalm 150. He did not begin with the TRUMPETS.

           As the scholar Gary Radke has pointed out in the exhibition volume Make a Joyful Noise  (2015, pp.11-49), one way to approach the problem of chronology is to look at the quality of carving and the intricacy of the relief depth carved. His belief that the Tambourine panel was carved first is a good one for just those reasons. The figures are flatter than in all of the other reliefs, the intricacy of overlapping marble parts is simpler, the children are, in spite of the LATIN, CYMBALIS BENE SONATIBUS, staid and restrained, hardly moving and hardly detached from the background. A beginning sample of careful, uncomplicated carving.

The children (some with wings, so presumably angels) are very young, keep their arms contained within the same section of marble used for their bodies, and form a tight, regularly layered group of three distinct reliefs, from high (carved further away from the background) to low (carved close to the background) without much interaction between the figures.  The framing figures at either side set the curtain ends for the main child in the center who wears a long wreath and whose tambourine sticks out furthest. These are simple, clear figures illustrating the instruments mentioned below them.

     What becomes apparent when we compare this panel with the others at the bottom and top is that this first group also represents a certain type of RHYTHM:  SLOW RHYTHM.         

If we take rhythm into account, and assume that Luca worked on the SLOW RHYTHM panels first, the next likely candidate for chronological order is the panel in front next to it, that of the CORDIS ET ORGANO (STRINGED INSTRUMENTS AND ORGAN):

In this panel are nine small children instead of seven, but the arrangement of them is similar, with bodies and heads of the same height carved in variations of low to high relief. These children encircle a central figure, this time a seated female who plays the portable organ. The sculpting is slightly more complex with the added instruments of harp and lute and the left leg of the far left figure separated from the other leg with more air between the two. Some air exists also between the legs of the chair and the legs of the girl with portable organ, but essentially the setup of the figures is like that of the TAMBOURINE panel, far left figure facing in to center, far right figure facing out to the viewer. And most importantly, apart from the projecting leg of the left figure, the figures hardly move, the RHYTHM is SLOW or STOPPED. In both panels some of the children do open their mouths to sing, but the appearance of the new musical instruments of portable organ, harp, and cittern do not make the figures move more quickly in the space; the instruments function like the four tambourines in the panel to the side of it, as visual signs for the words written below, CORDIS ET ORGANO.

         If we look closely at the three left figures in this panel, we are given a hint for the next panel carved, the side panel of the SCROLL:

Here in both we find the same motif of a low-relief (bas-relief) face in the left background behind two figures who drape arms over shoulders to join in the singing. Luca transfers this idea to the presentation of the choirboys in the SCROLL panel, where a hand juts out over the shoulder of the second-to last left figure and the hand appears over the right shoulder of the singer holding the left edge of the scroll. He has changed the ages of the participants to adolescents now, but the idea of joining together in music and song is continued from this front panel to the side panel, making a transition from second panel produced to third in the chronology.

          We have discovered the first three panels sculpted, then, and that would make the fourth an easy choice, since we know there were two large and two small finished by 1434:

In all FOUR of these early panels, the RHYTHM is SLOW. The figures stand and perhaps open their mouths or hold an instrument or CODEX or SCROLL, but apart from the foot beating time, or the leg akimbo, they do not move in the sculpted space very much. Their arms may crook at the elbow, but their heads remain on a line, high relief to low, and they stand as if the music-making has transfixed them. The tentative touching of hand to shoulder is symbolic of Luca's own tentative trying out movement and implied space for arms behind other figures. The figures in the CODEX panel are also adolescents and younger boys, and we have pointed out the bullying going on in the panel, but that is not carried out with much motion.

            Luca continues to be tentative in carving movement in the next two panels he must have carried out in the front because those, too, have SLOW RHYTHM. They are the panels of PSALTERIO and CYTHARA, the Psaltery and Cittern panels:

 5-Psaltery                                                                                   6-Cittern

The figures in these panels are adolescents and infants; they stand or sit, they sing and hold instruments, and the relief varies from high in front to low in the background, much as they were arranged in the first four panels we have discussed.  The rounded cheeks of the adolescent at left with child below (who has identical rounded cheeks and small mouth) connect this panel to the previous two smaller side panels:

 

The framing figures on the sides are vertical elements that keep the viewer's eye focused on the central activity in both large panels. The emphasis on the vertical pleats in the musicians' robes also contributes to the stiff nature of the movement. The players stand and sometimes sing, sometimes play, sometimes play as they sing, but rarely exit the borders of their own bodies. They are stopped to play the psalm music.

 

Only the small putti in the cittern panel begin to change the motion and rhythm of these panels by moving their arms to point to the players of the citterns above them. Their bodies also project more fully below and outside the high relief of the central figures.

 

               These male and female participants sing and play IN PLACE, demonstrating harmony in their composure and their instruments for their audience.  The instruments they play are ALL instruments of SOFT SOUND and SLOW MUSIC: PSALTERIES and CITTERNS in the upper sphere, ORGAN, HARP, LUTE, and TAMBOURINE in the lower sphere. THESE front panels, together with the side panels are the FIRST 6 to be produced by LUCA della ROBBIA, panels representing SLOW MUSIC, SLOW MOTION, SOFT SOUNDS.

 While it is possible that Luca worked simultaneously on several panels at once, and it is possible that workshop hands account for some of that work, the general principle of soft instruments and slow motion being created in the earliest of his panels on the Cantoria works for establishing a chronology. Whether he planned these central front panels to all be arrested motion and the others to be full motion is never written down. Neither is it written down the influence he exerted on Donatello or Donatello on him.  However, it seems likely that the four remaining panels in the front are the last to be completed, and it seems likely that they are given a faster RHYTHM and that they demonstrate that RHYTHM with LOUDER INSTRUMENTS under the influence of Donatello's arriving on the scene to begin his own Cantoria in 1433.  From this point on Luca's figures are filled with movement and liveliness and his own original arrangement of figures within panels changes in competition with the older master.

           We have only to look at the next panel I believe is seventh in the chronology, the CYMBALIS IUBILATIONIS, the Clashing CYMBALS and compare it with the right side panel of Donatello's

Cantoria to see the similarities:

Luca takes the rushing infant in the middle of Donatello's scene and transports it to the center of the CLASHING CYMBALS scene. The child has no wings and holds cymbals about to clash in his hands, but his feet are placed with weight on right foot, left foot swung back, exactly as the putto in Donatello's Cantoria begins the dance underneath trumpets in his side panel. What seems clear, too, is that Donatello's sense of infinite relief space sets a spark in Luca's figural arrangements. Luca no longer requires the side figures to turn inward to the center. The march of the cymbal players is from left to right, implying a space to the right and to the left that they are marching through and onward, much as the children in Donatello's also imply a marching through space.The overlapping of figures' legs, cymbals and hands and heads is all new to Luca, much more exciting and complex, stimulated by the layers of motion implied in the Donatellian example.

The same is true of comparisons of movement in the last three panels, 8, 9, and 10.  The RHYTHM is speeded up and the instruments play LOUD MUSIC, PIPE and DRUMS, and TRUMPETS. In each of these next panels the figural arrangements continue to be complex and in quick motion, requiring five layers of bas-relief, from high to low in an intermingling of instruments and dancers. Here we also find less emphasis on the framing figures to focus our attention on the central ones. Side putti distract from the main scene and imply infinite space and movement.      

           

 8 - TABOR AND PIPES, TIMPANO

            

 

9 SONO TUBAE, SOUND OF TRUMPETS

 

                             

                            10 - CHORO - DANCE

 

And in every last panel we see the influence of Donatello or that of Luca on Donatello:

In the very last panel, THE DANCE, CHORO, Luca presents his excellent skills as a sculptor. The children dance and sing, intertwine arms, legs, and cloth. In this panel Luca demonstrates 4 layers of relief carving, from high relief, almost three-dimensional figures to low-relief, close to the background marble. The fast circle dance in this last panel shows Luca at his best, harmonic, lively, sweet, and innocent. He has incorporated the best of Donatello's triumphant motion, even making the dance from right to left as Donatello's Cantoria is as a whole performance narrative.
          Look at the LEGS, though!  Even with the absorption of Donatello's movement into his scenes, Luca has not understood the basic concept of step sequencing.  The figures at the front of this dance, the ones in highest relief have a left leg on the ground, and are about to put weight on the right leg. They are not in sequence with each other or in sequence with the side figures whose feet either touch the ground or are lifted up high. Even if these feet were meant to represent a dance motion done in unison, they fail in the lack of symmetrical leg placement. If the circle is meant to present the continual motion of the dance, it fails, too, because it does not describe what Donatello understood as the core of perpetual motion:  STEP SEQUENCING.

 

        If Luca had given us the stepping we see in Donatello's Cantoria, we would have no problem imagining this circle in a continual eternity. But we have to ignore his FEET and look at his FACES: they are the carriers of this merriment and because of their beauty, we feel the joyful praise he wants to convey from Psalm 150.

But it is in DONATELLO's FEET that the viewer feels the RHYTHM of the PSALM and the future of movement in art. It is DONATELLO'S figures who carry forward the banner of joyful praise that excites every time it is replayed on the Cantoria for the Duomo, as though a Renaissance video.
            And it is not until Botticelli's Mystic Nativity that we see a similar circle dance of angels where the stepping follows Donatello's precept for an eternal rondo:

             The chronology of Luca's panels for the Cantoria, then, seems to be a sequence of 6 slow panels, followed by four quick ones, where the skill of the sculptor, for the most part, improves with age.
He begins lower center, moves to the side panels, then returns to the upper middle, finishing with his own circle dance by completing 7,8, 9, and 10. His own work sequence is not meant to convey a continuum. He wants us to stop and start, and stop again, to admire the particular sound for every panel. We see him give us a slice of rhythmic life in every scene and we pause to realize the connections he forges between words and musicians. If Luca had not had Donatello's Cantoria across from his, we would have been enchanted by his beautiful rendition of Psalm 150.

As it is, we look at Donatello and want Luca's angels to move faster.