This beautiful and curious picture is very characteristic of
Botticelli's genius. It is full of highly wrought emotion--note "the
fervour of the still Madonna as she kneels before the Child, the
extraordinary nervous tension which the artist has managed to suggest
in the seated figure of Joseph, the rapture and ecstasy of the angels";
the picture is full also, as we shall see, of mystic symbolism, but
all is crowned and harmonised by a sense of pictorial daintiness and
beauty. The centre of the picture is occupied by the familiar subject
of the Nativity, and the accessories suggest in symbolic fashion the
effects of Christ's Advent upon the good and the evil respectively. The
theological symbolism may be seen in the gesture of the divine Child
pointing to his mouth--typifying that he was the Word of God. So at the
bottom of the picture there are devils running, at Christ's coming,
into chinks of the rocks (those who are Christ's must put away "the
works of darkness"); whilst the shepherds and angels embracing signify
the reconciliation such as Savonarola wished to effect between heaven
and earth. On either side of the central group angels are telling
the glad tidings "of peace on earth, goodwill towards men." Note the
symmetry in this part of the picture; the three Magi on the left, the
three shepherds in adoration on the right; and in colour, the red frock
of the angel on the right, the red wings on the left. Meanwhile in the
sky above is a lovely choir of Botticelli's floating angels, dancing
between earth and heaven, on a golden background suffused with light.
The picture is, says Ruskin, "a quite perfect example of what the
masters of the pure Greek school did in Florence.... The entire purpose
of the picture is a mystic symbolism by motion and chiaroscuro. By
motion, first. There is a dome of burning clouds in the upper heaven.
Twelve angels half float, half dance, in a circle, round the lower
vault of it. All their drapery is drifted so as to make you feel the
whirlwind of their motion. They are seen by gleams of silvery or fiery
light, relieved against an equally lighted blue of inimitable depth
and loveliness. It is impossible for you ever to see a more noble
work of passionate Greek chiaroscuro--rejoicing in light" (_Lectures
on Landscape_, § 58). The introduction in the same picture of the
solemn teaching below, with these beautiful angel forms above, suggests
precisely what Ruskin has defined to be Botticelli's position among
pictorial reformers. "He was what Luther wished to be, but could not
be--a reformer still believing in the Church; his mind is at peace,
and his art therefore can pursue the delight of beauty and yet remain
prophetic." "He was not a preacher of new doctrines, but a witness
against the betrayal of old ones."
The first and more obvious intention of Botticelli's painted sermon
was, as we have seen, to show the effects of the Advent upon the good
and the evil. But he has also a particular application, an esoteric
meaning. The clue to this is afforded by the Greek inscription at the
top, which, being interpreted, is--
"This picture I, Alexander, painted at the end of the year
1500, in the troubles of Italy, in the half-time after the
time during the fulfilment of the eleventh of St. John, in the
Second Woe of the Apocalypse, in the loosing of the devil for
three years and a half. Afterwards he shall be confined, and we
shall see him trodden down, as in this picture."
"In the troubles of Italy, at the end of the year 1500." Now, on
May 12, 1497, exactly three years and a half before the date of
Botticelli's inscription, Savonarola was burnt alive (as depicted
on the little panel, No. 1301); and his death, says the historian,
"meant for Florence the triumph of all that was most corrupt; vice
was everywhere rampant, and virtuous living was utterly despised."
But in the faith of Botticelli, the reverent disciple of Savonarola,
this tyranny of the Evil One was doomed to pass away. He saw "in
the troubles of Italy" a fulfilment of the awful words to which his
inscription refers us in the eleventh chapter of the Revelation of St.
John the Divine:--
The holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.
And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall
prophesy. These are the two olive trees. And when they shall
have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out
of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall
overcome them, and kill them. And they that dwell upon the
earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send
gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented
them that dwelt on the earth. And after three days and an half
the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood
upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them.
And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them,
Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and
their enemies beheld them. The second woe is past. And there
were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world
are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he
shall reign for ever and ever.
To the elect, then, Botticelli meant his picture to show the fulfilment
of the prophecy by the Second Advent of Christ, and the final triumph
of Savonarola. The men embraced by angels are in this reading of the
picture the "witnesses" to whom the spirit of life was returned; they
are welcomed back to earth by angels, ere they are rapt heavenward.
They bear olive boughs, because in the Apocalypse olive trees are
symbolical of the Lord's anointed ones. "There is but one point
which seems at variance with the Biblical text: in it two witnesses
are spoken of, here there are three. This deviation was doubtless
intentional. When Savonarola died, two others shared his palm of
martyrdom, Fra Domenico Buonvicini and Fra Silvestre Marussi. The three
figures crowned with myrtle represent the three risen and glorified
martyrs" (Richter's _Lectures on the National Gallery_, p. 61. See also
Mr. Sidney Colvin's article in the _Portfolio_, Feb. 1879).