Sandro Botticelli

'Mystic Nativity', 1500, Oil on canvas, 108.6 x 74.9 cm, The National Gallery, London; Bought 1878, NG1034, © National Gallery, London / Art Resource, NY

Apocalypse Now

Commentary by Robin Griffith-Jones

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Read by Ben Quash

And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. (Revelation 12:9)

We ended the previous commentary with reference to Sandro Botticelli’s cryptic inscription along the painting’s top. It is in Greek, incomprehensible to most of Botticelli’s contemporaries. Botticelli wanted—needed?—to be mysterious. Here it is:

THIS PAINTING AT THE END OF THE YEAR 1500 IN THE TROUBLES OF ITALY I ALEXANDER, IN THE HALF-TIME AFTER A TIME, WAS PAINTING IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE ELEVENTH [CHAPTER] OF SAINT JOHN IN THE 2ND WOE OF THE APOCALYPSE IN THE LOOSING, FOR THREE-AND-A-HALF YEARS, OF THE DEVIL. THEN HE WILL BE BOUND IN THE 12TH AND WE WILL SEE HIM ABOUT TO BE BURIED SIMILAR TO THIS PAINTING.

Revelation 11 tells of two witnesses who testify for three-and-a-half years and are then killed by the beast coming up from the abyss (v.7). ‘The Second Woe has been and gone. Look, the Third Woe is coming soon’ (v.14, own translation).  

Botticelli was painting in Florence, at the beginning (in our modern calendar) of 1501. The French had invaded in 1494 and again in 1499. From September 1494, the Dominican mystic and preacher Fra Girolamo Savonarola had relentlessly threatened God’s punishment of the city. Savonarola and his follower Fra Domenico da Pescia preached for almost exactly three-and-a-half years until they were burnt at the stake in May 1498. Here, perhaps, had been the two prophets foreseen in Revelation 11. The banderoles of Botticelli’s heavenly angels bear the words of Savonarola’s own hymns to the Virgin.

The Mystic Nativity certainly recalls Revelation: in the open heaven (4:1), the twelve angels for stars above the Virgin (12:1), and those defeated devils (12:8). But the tone is so different: Botticelli’s angels have a playful grace, his devils are almost risible. There are hints of ‘Woe’ to come: the donkey bears on the neck the mark of a cross; the cave and swaddling-clothes portend burial. Yet the painting as a whole radiates joy.

Here was an artist, working in personal and civic turmoil, who could look through and beyond it to a depiction—so uplifting—of its resolution. It is as if he could see dreams as strange and as wise as the dreams of Joseph.

See full exhibition for Revelation 12:1–6, 13–17

Revelation 12:1–6, 13–17

Revised Standard Version

12And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; 2she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery. 3And another portent appeared in heaven; behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads. 4His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child when she brought it forth; 5she brought forth a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, 6and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which to be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days.

 

13 And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had borne the male child. 14But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time. 15The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with the flood. 16But the earth came to the help of the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river which the dragon had poured from his mouth. 17Then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the sea.

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