156. Mystic Nativity, 1500.

Oil on canvas, 108.6 x 74.9 cm.

The National Gallery, London.

 

 

Alexander, “the old scrap metal, ferro rotto”, and all the princes were atheists. Ferdinand of Naples died in 1494, according to the master of ceremonies Johannes Burchard, “sine luce, sine cruce, sine Deo” (without light, without cross, without God). Friar Savonarola cried out to them that they would soon be dragged with iron rings through their noses like circus animals. Florence-all the nobles, clerks, monks, youth, women-had abandoned the ways of God. Savonarola said to the young boys and girls: “You are the fat cows of Samaria, vaccae pingues in Samaria”. He predicted that the patron saints of Italy, Saint John, Saint Marcus, and Saint Paul, would formidably descend from the heavens in order to punish their cities. In a dream he saw a black cross hovering over Rome, while Florence was rotting away in luxury. Savonarola strove to make Florence repent, beat its own chest, and he instigated extravagant and solemn auto-da-fés in 1496 and 1497, when Florence burnt the paintings, elegant furniture, courtly cloaks, feminine apparel, the Morgante maggiore and the Decameron to the chant of the Te Deum.

To the envious common people, to the barefoot crowds, the Ciompi, Savonarola promised that the riches would be shared, the wealthy would be miserable, the palaces would burn, and the heads of the lords would roll. He predicted plague, war, famine, death rotting in the streets, and a shower of swords and knives falling on the peninsula from the Alps to Mount Etna. Florence would be destroyed, Rome would be destroyed, and barbarians would massacre and burn all of Italy in order to punish it for its renunciation of its own religion. “In vain,” he cried, “will you flee left and right, the scourge will be everywhere. You will see darkness everywhere and you will not know where to hide your head any more. Darkness here, darkness there, everything clouded, the earth clouded, the sky clouded, the sun, the moon, the angels clouded, God clouded!” He predicted his own tragic end: “I know well that people will rise against me saying: Hic est reus mortis! Death to him! Death to him! Let us kill him!”

He then created a monastic church, a church of visionaries, an ascetic Christianity in opposition to the pontifical Church. He demanded church reform, the convocation of a Council, and the deposition of Alexander VI. In Poggibonsi, in the joyous turmoil of the French camp, he implored Charles VIII to reform Rome, or else God would punish him. He was then for some time the master of the Florentine revolution and the terror of Pope Borgia. When he spoke in his chair at Santa Maria del Fiore, the masses were bowing their heads to the tiles of the cathedral, sobbing, begging for mercy. His followers called themselves the “weepers”, Piagnoni, from the name given to the black penitents at mortuary vigils.

Botticelli joined this melancholy world of the Piagnoni. His membership in Savonarola’s church was not, in fact, the result of a sudden revelation. For so many years, a vein of restless sadness had dug itself into his conscience, intensified by bitter life experiences. The Rome of Sixtus IV had already shown Botticelli what to expect from the Rome of Alexander VI. The artist had encountered the Pazzi Cardinal Riario many times in the corridors of the Vatican. With these constant reminders of his country’s degradation, the tercets of the Inferno seemed to him the most appropriate to the sombre homilies of the imperious Dominican monk. Botticelli’s sensibility wounded, his imagination filled with torturous images, the anticipation of dark days ahead sealed this last calling of his genius and his faith.