ART AND DEVOTION
“Be Welcome, my God, Caroline Shaw on The Nativity by Piero della Francesca (c.1470-75) in the National Gallery, London
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n this beautiful image - which is quite possibly the last work painted by Piero della Francesca - we see Our Lady kneeling before her newborn baby, Who is the Son of God. He lies naked, vulnerable and pale on his mother’s outstretched mantle, His arms reaching up towards her for comfort. Our Lady gazes at her Son, her eyes downcast and her hands together in prayer. Her expression of humble and profound contemplation, together with her stillness and interior prayerfulness, powerfully indicate to us the enormity of the event. Behind the Christ child stand five wingless angels. Two of the angels sing praises, their mouths agape and eyes raised Heavenward, while another two accompany the singers on the lute. The central angel meanwhile, stays silent, joining Our Lady in prayerful adoration of the Son of God. Although one can imagine how beautiful the Heavenly music must have been, somehow in the limpid stillness of the scene, no sound seems to break the silence. To the right is St Joseph, dressed in black and pink and seated on a saddle. He turns to listen to the account of two shepherds, as they recount the extraordinary events they have just witnessed. The shepherd on the left points upwards as he describes the multitude of angels that thronged the night sky above. The scene is set on a raised rocky outcrop above a landscape which, on the left, closely resembles the valley of the river Arno. On the right there is a townscape of spires and towers that could very well be Borgo Sansepolcro. The artist has replaced the landscape of the Holy Land with the pale hills and dark trees of the Tuscan countryside, while his own home town represents Bethlehem. The monumental event of the birth of the Son of God has thus been brought to fifteenth-century
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Tuscany. The ruined structure behind the figures, with its sloping roof and broken walls, symbolizes the collapse of the classical temple and the end of the pagan religion at the moment of the Nativity. A new era has begun: the era of Our Lord. The ox and ass who shelter under the roof are often associated with the pagans (the ass) and the Jews (the ox), who will both bow down before the Messiah. On the roof of the structure sits a magpie, a bird most commonly associated with man’s fallen nature, combining as it does, intelligence with a sly and thieving character. In contrast to the braying ass, the magpie is silent, his normal chatter has died away and he stands as a mute witness to the scene before him. In the foliage to the left of the feet of the angel in white, perch three goldfinches. These small birds are traditionally associated with Christ’s Passion and particularly His crown of thorns, since they feed on thistle seeds and prickly shrubs. The goldfinches represent the foreknowledge Our Lady and Jesus Himself had of His Passion and Crucifixion. The limpid, ethereal light bathes the whole scene in an atmosphere of silent contemplation. The composition and colours the artist has used lend the painting a deeply lyrical quality. The beautifully graded blues of the angels’ robes, together with the greyish-blue of the sky and the rocky landscape, create a cool, still air. The angels lead our eye from the left hand side towards the centre of the painting, where our eye rests upon Our Lady with her luminously pale skin and rich dark blue robe. To the right, the colours become more earthy, warm and rustic – the skin tone of the shepherds, and indeed of St Joseph, is darker, and the brown, pink, black and russet red of their clothes create a more earth-bound and human feel. Our Lady, in the centre of
the painting, acts as a link between the angels and the shepherds, just as she is a bridge between the Heavenly realm and the earthly world that we inhabit. This scene is far more silent and introspective than most Nativity scenes. The ox and ass, the shepherds and the stable are all present, but it lacks the joyful throng and the tender sweetness of many such images. Indeed, although the title of the painting is the ‘Nativity’, the scene that Piero has painted should more accurately be described as the ‘Adoration of the Christ Child’, since it draws upon the vision of the birth of Our Lord which St Bridget of Sweden received during a visit to Bethlehem in March 1372. Her account, which was well known and very popular in the 15th century, describes the birth of Our Lord, in the presence of St Joseph and the ox and the ass, in a most vivid and beautiful way: “Verily, all of a sudden, I saw the glorious infant lying on the ground naked and shining. His body was pure from any kind of soil and impurity. Then I heard also the singing of the angels, which was of miraculous sweetness and great beauty… When therefore the virgin felt that she had borne her child, she immediately worshipped Him, her head bent down and her hands clasped, with great honour and reverence, and said unto Him, ‘Be welcome my God, my Lord and my Son’. When this was done, the old man entered, and prostrating himself to the floor, he wept for joy.” Many other Renaissance artists, including Botticelli and Fra Filippo Lippi, also portrayed the Adoration of the Christ Child according to the description of St Bridget. However, in this quiet, still, enigmatic scene, Piero comes perhaps closest of all to conveying the intensity and gravity, and indeed the great unfathomable mystery, of the Incarnation itself.
WINTER 2017
